Soon after legendary kung fu star Jackie Chan is invited to adopt a beloved zoo panda, a notorious international crime syndicate sets its sights on the bear and offers a massive bounty for his capture. Faced with this sudden crisis, Jackie enlists the help of his agent and Hu Hu's fiercely dedicated caretaker, leading the trio on an outrageous and unforgettable adventure as they seek to outsmart-and outkick-the bad guys at every turn. (from IMDB)

Foreign films don't always translate well when they're shown across borders, and Chinese-made films have certainly been a mixed bag through the years. Jackie Chan crossed over to U.S. audiences successfully in the 90's, but nothing has been a bigger hit over here in the States than his American-made movies that often teamed him up with a popular U.S. talent. In more recent years, as Jackie has gotten older, he seems to be sticking to making movies in his home country, and his latest effort, Panda Plan, is a curious endeavor that feels like a truly odd direction to go in at this stage in his illustrious career.

2023's Ride On was the last time I saw Jackie in a new film. A slightly more dramatic take on his China-made action movies, it served as a way to honor his legacy, making his character a retired film star whose career looked very much like Jackie's real one. Last year's Panda Plan has Jackie playing a fictionalized version of himself. The movie opens with him on set filming a pretty violent action sequence (that we don't realize is his character making a movie as it's unfolding), and in his boredom following it, he decides to adopt a panda as a way of giving back in a charitable way. When he attends an official ceremony for the event, a team of armed mercenaries show up and attempt to steal the panda. Throughout the film, people are constantly recognizing Jackie for the star he is, and even the bad guys are either starstruck or excited by the prospect of fighting him. This is often played for laughs or done in a tongue-in-cheek way, and occasionally it is kind of amusing, but for the most part, it just goes to show how uneven in tone this movie really is, and glaring evidence that no one making this movie seems to know exactly who its audience is.

At a glance, Panda Plan seems like it should be a kids movie. After all, it involves action movie legend Jackie Chan, in his golden years, trying to protect a cute, little, fluffy panda. However, that opening action scene, before you realize his character is making a movie, is pretty bloody, with the last instance of such graphicness showing some of his squibs going off right in the director's face, covering it in a pretty substantial layer of fake blood. It's played for laughs, clearly, but the two instances of multiple bloody gunshot wounds squirting from the hero's vest could be pretty disturbing for young viewers. A couple scenes later, as two goofy mercenaries drop in on zoo guards and knock them out (violently, I might add), one of them drops the "F" bomb in broken English. It had me wondering pretty early on if this was basically a movie that would have been rated R if it had gone through the MPAA. However, from then on out, it's all kept pretty PG-13, with that being the lone "F" word, and there not being anything else graphic like the opening sequence. There is some profanity use throughout, including some blasphemy, but it ends up being somewhat infrequent.

Speaking of broken English, the way languages are handled with this movie is pretty strange. The whole movie is presented in subtitles, both English and Chinese stacked on top of one another, and the audio doesn't appear to ever be overdubbed, but characters are frequently shifting between using English and Chinese. It's nice to hear Jackie's real voice, whether he's speaking English or Chinese, but it's a little jarring to pretty frequently have to shift from ignoring the subtitles when you understand the audio to checking them if you don't (so if you don't expect a change in the language their speaking, you may miss the appropriate subtitle as it passes by). It's also a little confusing as to where they are sometimes or what nationality these bad guys are supposed to be. We basically find out that a rich guy hired a team of armed mercenaries to steal the panda (for questionable reasons we find out at the end). Their leader is a street-fighting kind of tough Asian guy, whose righthand man is a blue-mohawk-haired fighter named James who sort-of speaks English (but with an accent). Two of his own thugs are a young white, blonde-haired guy who speaks broken English and a heavy-set African American who also speaks with a strange accent. Oh, and the acting is so bad, it's painful. "Campy" is the name of the game here. These two thugs overact and ham it up the entire film, while Jackie's director/assistant/friend, David, is as goofy as they come. (He reminded me of Rainn Wilson, from The Office, for some reason, if that helps put his character into perspective.) The panda handler, Su Xiaozhu, is also a bit grating. She's sweet, but she also whines a lot and is constantly shrieking about what's happening around her. I suppose we don't watch Jackie Chan movies for the acting, but it just really helps when he's surrounded by likeable - and watchable - characters. Every single character in this movie feels like a live action cartoon character or a caricature, and it wears thin pretty quickly.

The icing on the cake, however, is the eponymous panda bear. Not one shot in the movie seems to be of a real, live panda bear. I can understand them using a baby panda for some scenes and a digital panda or stuffed - or even animatronic - panda for other scenes, but every. single. shot of the movie is a poorly rendered digital panda. Some shots look better than others, but there really isn't one moment where the panda actually looks real or like it's really there. And whenever an actor is supposed to be interacting with, or holding, the fuzzy little cub, it's quite obvious that there's nothing really there. It's sad. There's a goofy scene at one point that involves our heroes trying to retrieve some milk from a rhinoceros mother at the zoo, and it's just painful to watch (the poor animation and seeing Jackie squeeze a rubber rhino udder into a glass jar). It's scenes like these that feel especially cartoony, and I'm surprised Jackie signed off on it (but should I be?).

I have to admit, though, that as bad as the movie can be, I can't say it's completely boring to watch. I've seen boring bad movies, or tedious episodes from celebrated TV shows, and at least Panda Plan is somewhat entertaining (could it be because it's just so unbelievably bad?). Again, I like watching Jackie, and it's nice to see the 70-year-old still has some moves. Sure, he's slowed down a lot and can't fight like he used to, but it's still fun to see him try. A few moments felt awkward - like fights beyond his current abilities - but, again, he still has more fight in him at 70 than probably most of us do at a couple decades his junior.

So, as far as content goes, the first scene is really the only bloody, graphic content, with it probably only being included because it's intended to be shown as fake and over-the-top from being a movie scene within the movie. (It's still rather shocking, considering.) The rest of the film's violence would fall easily under a PG-13 banner, as well as the profanity (taking into consideration the lone "F" word usage). There's one sexual gag that's meant as a silly misunderstanding, however, where two male mercenaries disrobe in front of their male prisoner, who immediately assumes the guys are looking for sexual favors. They quickly dispel his concerns and reveal Jackie Chan-themed tattoos that they wanted to show him on their bodies.

Panda Plan is ultimately a hot mess - a low budget martial arts slapstick comedy that feels poorly conceived in almost every way, but with its one, single merit being the presence of Jackie Chan and his brand of martial-arts-driven comedy. If you're a diehard fan of a variety of his work, Panda Plan will be a nice treat, but if you're more so a fan of his American work - like Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, The Tuxedo, etc -- you should make a plan to avoid this one completely.