Peacocks seem innocuous enough creatures. They're not particularly strong or fast, and they don't even fly that well. They seem about as dangerous as a doily sitting on the end table.

But maybe that's part of their nefarious master plan. Maybe, when your back is turned, the common peacock will develop the ability to talk, smelt metal and craft a strategy to take over the known world.

Lord Shen is just such a peacock. Banished from the family palace for being a megalomaniacal pest, Shen decides to show his now-dead parents just how wrong they were about him by taking over China. So far he's managed to recruit an army of wolves and forge a battery of doomsday weapons—cannons the likes of which China has never seen. (Which, frankly, wasn't hard to do, since China, in Lord Shen's era, had never seen a cannon.)

"Compare me to a doily, will you!?" Shen seems to say as he fires cannonballs at his enemies. Soon, some of the best martial artists in China are quaking in their boots, unable to compete with Shen's metallic orbs of death. It appears that kung fu itself may fall to such firepower.

Only one force stands between Shen and the rest of China: Po, the rotund, newly minted Dragon Warrior, and his buds in the Furious Five.

But the panda has problems of his own. Seems that Mr. Ping, the goose who raised Po from the time he was a baby, isn't (Spoiler Warning!) his birth father. (See, we told you it was a spoiler.) That's, naturally, thrown poor, poor Po for a loop. The panda suspects that Shen may know something about what happened to his birth parents. But will Shen divulge? Or will he just let his cannons do all the talking?

:: Review
Kung Fu Panda 2 won't be remembered as an animated classic. It doesn't have the artistry or resonance that, say, an Up or a WALL-E boast. But like those Pixar films, its moral and message seems more geared toward the adults in the audience than the little kids they likely have in tow.

We're told that just because your story starts out bad—just because some awful things happen to you—doesn't mean your whole life need reflect that. It's what you do, not what others do to you, that makes you who you are.

"You gotta let go of that stuff from the past, because it just doesn't matter," Po tries telling Shen. While that's a great, important message for adults, the peacock doesn't quite get the point, and my guess is that the average 6-year-old won't either.

But isn't it a little refreshing to hear about a cartoon where the moral of the story is the thing that's not necessarily age appropriate—instead of the content that surrounds it? Kung Fu Panda 2 is largely free of sexual imagery, foul language and gross-out toilet humor. And the violence, while extensive, is actually a shade better than Yosemite Sam getting clobbered with an anvil and a whole lot better than Elmer Fudd getting shot in the face.

Which leaves the yin-yang spirituality. And on that one, because it's not shouted from the treetops, many families will be able to use its presence to kick-start a conversation about not only what God thinks about balance in our lives, but also how Eastern spiritual thought doesn't quite line up with His Word.

Po is eminently likable here, just for the record—a more realistic hero for those of us who don't always look the greatest or have the correct words. He's a regular panda trying to do the right thing. Is he willing to die for the good cause in which he believes? Yes—but he'd prefer not to

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