Things could have turned out very differently for Jack Black had he decided to follow in the family business, with both of his parents being satellite engineers, and his mother Judith Love Cohen worked on the Hubble Space Telescope and the Apollo Space Program. In fact, his brother is also a computer engineer with a long history of developing technology for the military, whereas young Jack went on to lend his boisterous enthusiasm to a string of broad comedies and family films, including Netflix success Kung Fu Panda 3.
Since being added to the library at the beginning of the month, the animated threequel has ascended as high as fourth position on the most-watched list around the world, even if the franchise has itself has largely been forgotten about. Which is a strange decision the part of DreamWorks when Kung Fu Panda has gone on to earn $1.8 billion at the box office and spawn a multimedia franchise of TV shows, short films, video games and more.
A trio of eminently entertaining martial arts adventures with a dysfunctional band of anthropomorphized animals doing battle to save China, the series did nonetheless fall into a familiar DreamWorks pitfall of paying what would’ve no doubt been top dollar for an A-list voice cast, only to give them very little to do in the grand scheme of things.
Among the Kung Fu Panda alumni to have contributed almost nothing memorable or of note are Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Jean-Claude Van Damme and even Al Roker for whatever reason. That being said, esteemed veterans Dustin Hoffman, James Hong, Ian McShane and Gary Oldman brought their animated A-game, while Black never gave anything less than 100% as Po.
