Absolutely love documentaries and documentary films, especially nature ones. Have always found pandas beautiful and personality filled animals that are not shown enough in documentaries generally. There are a lot of good IMAX nature documentaries out there, having seen many short films over the past year or so that are visually stunning and informative despite being generally too short. China is also a wonderfully exotic and culturally fascinating place.
'China: The Panda Adventure' somehow despite all that potential didn't do it for me. It didn't strike me as awful and a few things are done very well. It is sadly a case of that a vast majority of the most crucial areas to get right are not done well at all, and on the whole as a documentary film 'China: The Panda Adventure' is a failure. An interesting one, but a failure nonetheless. This is being said with regret, hate being critical and the potential was quite big but somehow the execution was too little.
There are things done right. On the whole, 'China: The Panda Adventure' is very good looking. The scenery of course is stunning and the colour is full of vibrancy and atmosphere, all shot slickly and beautifully with nice varied camera techniques. Particularly the aerial shots.
Furthermore, the pandas are absolutely adorable and have such great personalities of a wide variety of emotions. Maria Bello acquits herself quite nicely.
Did find the rest of the acting rather one dimensional in very limited and stereotypical roles, Johnston coming off worst. Would have liked less of the human scenes and more of the pandas, the film does come to life when they are seen and it dulls when they are not as focused upon. When it comes to the educational aspect, the film doesn't work. Personally didn't learn very much new at all and there actually could have been a lot more of a documentary feel and less of the romanticised Hollywood-ish storytelling that can be too cute and heavy handed.
Conflict is predictable and lacks tension and the dialogue is mundane and cheesy with a tendency to preach. The music could have been less in use and in sound and stylistically it doesn't quite gel particularly well. While most of the visuals are fine, there are imperfections, with some blurry shots and effects that lack focus and too relied upon when strictly speaking there wasn't really any need for them.
Summing up, underwhelming. 4/10.
