Panda Plan Movie Review: The Worst of Plans

 Jackie Chan stars in Panda Plan, the narratively inert, visually plain and ultimately tasteless action “comedy” from director Luan Zhang.

Kids deserve better; their parents certainly do too. Heck, even pandas deserve better, and they’re going extinct because they’re too lazy to move and look for their food!

Funnily enough, Panda Plan starts with some promise. Actually, it starts with its sole good action sequence, which is ironic, considering it’s the only one that’s supposed to look fake. In it, we watch Jackie Chan playing a fictionalised version of himself, acting in an action movie that’s supposed to make him look invincible. Tired of appearing in bad films (ha), he accepts a proposal from a zoo and becomes the adoptive father of a rare panda cub nicknamed “Big Babe”. But it turns out an Arab Sheikh wants the creature for himself, so he sends a group of mercenaries led by a mohawked assassin in order to get it. Thus, Chan ends up joining forces with Big Babe’s caretaker, Su Xiaozhu (Ce Shi) to protect it from the thieves.

All we should expect from a new Jackie Chan offering nowadays are exciting action sequences, good physical comedy, and a lesson to be learned. Panda Plan tries to give us all that, but because it’s geared towards children, it does it in the most infantile and simplistic way possible. Thus, we end up with lazily choreographed fight sequences (although the first one is quite bloody for some reason), groan-inducing physical comedy, over-the-top performances, and truly terrible CGI. It seems Zhang wanted to appeal to the lowest common denominator, but even they deserve something less insulting these days.

Even though the plot is simple enough, it moves at a glacial pace; the film stops from time to time to contrive some dire situation from which Chan and his friends must escape. That’s how we end with Chan getting trapped in a carton box with a goon, him trying to milk a mamma rhino (please don’t ask) and finally, our hero using panda poop to defeat the leader of the mercenaries in a fight. I’m not against potty humour —it can be quite funny if used well– but all Panda Plan managed to do when presenting me with farts, pee and other animal bodily fluids was gross me out.

Which isn’t all too uncommon when talking about kid movies. Kids love potty humour, and there’s nothing funnier than poo and fart jokes when you’re six or seven. But even toilet gags have to be well-constructed and have a point, otherwise, you end up with something generic and cringe-worthy. Panda Plan tries to compensate for all this with Chan’s trademark action scenes, but these are so badly choreographed, brief and slow that I couldn’t avoid thinking: well, maybe it’s time for good ol’ Jackie Chan to stop making action movies. It’s not a nice thought, nor is it something I ever wanted to see for myself, yet here we are.

Moreover, even though Jackie The Character doesn’t want to appear in action films where he beats up thirty bad guys by himself just so he can look good, Jackie The Actor is treated with such reverence by Panda Plan that one can’t help finding irony in all of this. Everybody is a fan of his, everyone wants his picture or his autograph, and late in the proceedings, a couple of dumb goons even change sides just because they’re big fans of his. They reveal their Jackie Chan body tattoos in a scene that’s constructed in a way that makes it look like, at best, a sex gag, and at worst, a rape joke; yes, a rape joke in a supposed family picture. Between the extreme reverence towards Chan and the tastelessness of the “humour”, I really don’t know what Zhang and company were thinking while making Panda Plan.

At least Chan remains relatively unscathed, demonstrating that his charisma can transcend pretty much everything. But apart from his game performance and the good intentions of the film’s pro-panda message, there’s nothing to recommend here. The movie even ends with a melodramatic twist that, for some reason, tries to humanise the Big Bad and feels totally unearned, manipulative and even gross (just know that it involves a sick child that appears out of nowhere). I wasn’t expecting much from Panda Plan, and yet it still managed to disappoint me. This might be Jackie Chan’s worst film in his more than sixty-year-old career and one of the most irritating and questionable family movies I’ve ever seen. No plan can prepare you for this.

Panda Plan will be released digital, Blu-Ray & DVD in the US theatres on February 18, 2025. In the UK & Ireland, the movie is now available to watch on digital platforms.