The Little Panda Fighter

The Little Panda Fighter
"Oh, how the humanity had fallen!"
Genre: Animation Directed by: Michelle Gabriel Produced by: Maurico Milani Starring: Paul Schlosser (dubbed by Dan Green) Sidney Ross (dubbed by David Brimmer) Photography: Color Distributed by: Vídeo Brinquedo Morningstar Entertainment Release date: November 18, 2008 Runtime: 51 minutes Country: Brazil

The Little Panda Fighter (titled Ursinho da Pesada in Brazil and originally titled Heavy's Little Bear) is a Brazilian direct-to-video computer-animated sports action-comedy film made by Vídeo Brinquedo and was released on November 18, 2008.

Since its released, The Little Panda Fighter has received criticism for being a knock-off of the more superior DreamWorks Animation film Kung Fu Panda.

Plot

A panda janitor named Pancada (meaning "punch" or "beatdown" in Portuguese) works at a boxing/wrestling club called the "Bear Bar Box". He has dreams of one day becoming a professional dancer and is in love with a waitress named Beth. His boss, a polar bear named Polaris, is scheduled to fight a large bear named Freak Teddy, who has won every fight he has been in in the past two years. Pancada visits his dancing instructor, Master Xin, who teaches him about loyalty. The following day, Polaris has found a black costume and tells Pancada to wash it for him. The costume shrinks in the wash, resulting in Polaris having the appearance of a panda bear. As Polaris begins the fight with Freak Teddy, Pancada goes to a dance competition, where he ends up winning.

Polaris wins the match against Freak Teddy, and because of his panda-like appearance, the club's patrons mistakenly congratulate Pancada for being a powerful fighter. Pancada, having won the dance competition, erroneously believes that he is being congratulated for his dancing skills. Before Polaris leaves for a vacation, Pancada himself enters the ring to fight Freak Teddy and loses. Polaris informs Pancada that he had made a bet that Pancada would lose the fight, and therefore, he becomes wealthy. After Polaris heads off for the icy mountains, Pancada transforms the boxing club into a dance club.

Why Pancada Got Defeated and the Humanity Had Fallen

1. Its main criticism is that it's a rip-off of Kung Fu Panda, to the point where in the cover art, Pancada does the same Kung Fu pose that Po does in the cover art for Kung Fu Panda.
2. Lazy and dreadful CGI animation that looks like something out of a 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, PlayStation or a Nintendo 64 cutscene and is somehow worse than Video Brinquedo’s previous film.
3. The lip-syncing is way off. When one of the characters stops talking, the audio still goes on and on.
4. Bad editing.
5. Nightmarish character designs with Pancada's design being the worst offender.
6. Very unlikable characters, aside from Polaris and Freak Teddy.
7. Horrible soundtrack. For example, in one scene the music score sounds more like, we kid you not, a piano literally being smashed by a sledgehammer than attempting to play a coherent tune. Yes, really.
8. As Danny Gonzalez mentioned in his review, when Pancada is stroking his boss’s desk, it makes an annoying scratching noise.
9. Despite The Little Panda Fighter being a kids movie, there are a few moments in the film that can get a bit inappropriate, such as:
   • During the part where Polaris bends down during his talk with his partner (who looks like Boo Boo from Yogi Bear), his pecs bend and fold over.
   • For some odd reason, Polaris' panther has a snotty nose.
   • During the scene where Polaris' costume shrinks, the camera pans down to his abdomen area... where Polaris' crotch is revealed as his costume shrinks.
10. False advertising for four reasons:
    • For one thing, Pancada, the "little" panda, is actually a full-grown adult panda, and he doesn't even fight until the last five minutes of the movie. He only did it because he wanted to be treated like a celebrity if he won.
    • It also shows Pancada in an entirely new place that was never shown in the film; one of the DVD covers even shows it in a Sunset-like setting, which is never featured in any of the scenes from the film.
    • The DVD cover makes it look like The Little Panda Fighter is going to be a 2D cartoon due to Pancada having itches of fur in the cover, but it's actually in 3D.
    • The cover also shows Pancada in a Kung Fu pose, despite the movie's main martial art being about boxing or wrestling.
11. Despite Pancada being the main character, he barely does anything in the film.
12. Odd and out-of-place cartoony sound-effects.
13. The English dub is pretty awkward. All the characters fluctuate between speaking extremely quickly and slowly at certain times that it's hard to understand what they're saying. This is mainly due to the fact that the film was dubbed, so the actors had to do their best to match what the characters are saying.
    • While this is normally understandably for anime TV shows/films to be dubbed, those had the excuse of them speaking in Japanese, while in the case with The Little Panda Fighter, it was made in Brazil, which technically was already in English, so it makes no sense as to why they dubbed this.
14. There's a random sub-plot about Pancada having a crush on Beth, but that never gets resolved.
15. The movie is full of padding to increase the run time. For example, there is a whole entire scene where Pancada just walks over a bridge (which lasts for 21 seconds), there are three scenes where Pancada walks into Polaris's office, which go on for a very long time, and then there is a scene where Beth is taking a long time to pick up the newspaper. There is also a pointless sub-plot of Pancada, after dancing in front of some judges and Master Xin, being accepted into a dance academy. The reason this is pointless is that, after that scene is over, neither Pancada nor Master Xin mention it again. There's also a tiresome scene where Pancada trains for the match against Freak Teddy which uses the same footage but only edited. It lasts 3 minutes.
16. Laughable dialogue, such as the scene after Pancada loses the match and Polaris said "RIIICH! Hah! In fact, I'm about the richest man in the whole CITY!!!", despite the fact that they're all bears and don't even live in a city.
17. For some strange reason, most of the non-main character bear people have the same designs aside from a few color changes, and also look like rejected characters from the 3D Baby First show, Dan and Daddy.
18. During the filler where Pancada trains for the match as stated above, there are attempts at intentional comedy, but they are shamelessly poor and stupid.
19. Poor world building, as there's barely no one around in the place, to the point that it feels very boring since the only locations mentioned are the Bear Bar Box and Master Xin's dojo house.
20. Mixing Boxing with Chinese Culture is weird, as they have little to nothing resembling them together in any way.
21. Very mediocre climax/ending: Pancada fights Freak Teddy in a boxing match but loses and is quite upset about it; however, Polaris says that it's a good thing, because he knew that Pancada would lose. So, Polaris bets everyone that Pancada would lose, which he does; because of that, Polaris is incredibly rich, so he heads back home and has Pancada take over his place.
    • The ending in particular also sends out a really bad moral to people, which is: "You can use anyone to get what you want".
22. The very infamous "Oh, how the humanity had fallen!" line, even though they are bears.

(Somewhat) Redeeming Qualities

1. A few unintentionally funny moments (like Freak Teddy laughing, stopping, and then laughing again).
2. The voice acting is decent from a few actors like Dan Green and Mike Pollock, despite being a bit awkward. They also put effort into it.
3. Despite being oddly said, Polaris' line "RIIICH! Hah! In fact, I'm about the richest man in the whole CITY!!!" is very funny.
4. The ending credits theme is catchy.
5. Polaris and Freak Teddy are the only likable characters. Why couldn't the film just focus on them?

Reception

The Little Panda Fighter received extremely negative reviews from both critics and audiences. It currently has a 21% rating from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes and currently has an IMDb rating of 1.4/10. Only 17% of Google users liked the film.

Trivia

• The film along with Ratatoing were parodied in an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball titled "The Treasure".
• The movie was never brought to North America, Japan, and Europe other than the U.K. and Germany. Despite this, the movie was on streaming services like Prime Video and YouTube as well as being released on DVD Movie Packs. The UK DVD was made by the infamous Brightspark Productions Ltd.

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