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FeedMovie Review: The Karate Kid
Films opening this week:
The A-Team - Maple Ridge; Market Arcade; McKinley Mall Dipson; Transit, Elmwood, Galleria, Hollywood Regal; Flix; Transit Drive-In
Harry Brown - Eastern Hills Dipson
The Karate Kid - Maple Ridge; Market Arcade; McKinley Mall Dipson; Transit, Elmwood, Galleria, Quaker, Hollywood Regal; Flix
Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage - Select days and times at HD Video Cafe & Screening Room - REVIEW
Not only has Sony had the audacity to remake this classic 80s film from my childhood, they've change the heritage from Japan to China and the titular karate to kung fu. At one point the new movie was named The Kung Fu Kid, an appropriate alteration considering the very disparate cultures being utilized, but then they must have decided we dumb Americans wouldn't know the difference between the two anyway. China and Japan? You mean Asia right? Don’t they all practice karate straight from the womb? Yeah, I’m almost positive that exchange is pretty similar to the one that must have sparked the title change back to The Karate Kid.
For all these reasons and more, I wanted to hate this movie. Therefore, no one was more surprised than I was to leave the theater thinking they did a pretty bang-up job updating the tale and keeping the underlying theme of conquering one’s fears alive. As the guy who brought us The Pink Panther 2—and the rest of his English language fare is no better—Harald Zwart’s involvement did nothing to quell my feelings of dread. But he not only gets some good performances out of the cast, there are some excellent kung fu fights, a well-shot extended chase scene between Jaden Smith’s lead Dre Parker and the six Chinese youngsters looking to pay him back, and a few nice, if obvious, transitional cuts.
Protagonist Dre's mom Sherry Parker, played by the ever-wonderful Taraji P. Henson, has been transferred to China for her job, which she needs to raise Dre, whose father has been deceased for a few years. She is doing her best to learn the language and get her son excited at the prospect of living abroad, but he is a stubborn, borderline insolent kid, constantly fighting against the reality of his situation, wishing he could just go back to the way things were. Dre gets bullied after falling for a pretty young violinist, hiding within himself until Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) lends a helping hand. The plot uses misinterpretation and ignorance to earn a few laughs, while also bolstering the idea of respect at the base of it all.
Dre meets the kind, shy, and jubilant Mei Ying (Wenwen Han), but also runs into persecution at the hands of the Fighting Dragon School’s students. Their prize pupil Cheng (Zhenwei Wang) starts building up a rapport as the villain of the film, only to be superseded by the eventual introduction of Master Li (Rongguang Yu), a man who has the potential of being as loathsome as Martin Kove’s John Kreese. But these sinister developments are (sadly) underplayed as we watch Dre be a kid, fall into puppy love, get pushed around a bit, and start to be proactive in his defensive prowess. Smith is not the greatest of young actors, sometimes showing his craft too much, a shame since he can also be very charismatic and loose. But then I recall early episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and see the unfathomable metamorphosis Dad Will went through during his own career, it demonstrates that Jaden most certainly has a bright future ahead talent-wise—he’s already starting to look more and more like his father.
His interactions with Mei Ying are authentic and his battles with Cheng and gang set the stage nicely for the film’s inevitable collision course on the mat. But while kids being kids worked for me, taking out the antagonists for a good portion of the story was a mistake. I almost forgot there was a tournament coming with all the talk of hanging jackets, pinky swears, respecting the honor of Chinese families and mothers, and Mr. Han brooding over his dark past. Even the training is abbreviated, only using one monotonous chore as a basis to the choreography before the splendor of China’s landscape and architecture divert our eyes from the lack of authentic kung fu. The Forbidden City and dramatic puppetry during a Chinese Valentine’s Day celebration at the Shadow Theatre do add an exotic intrigue the original filmmakers tried to infuse into the series with The Karate Kid, Part II Okinawa location.
The biggest positive of The Karate Kid, though, is the performance of Jackie Chan. Chan has become such a caricature lately that expecting anything other than a jokey performance seemed impossible. Yet he delivers some of the best acting I’ve seen from him, doing great honor to the late Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi. The film also shows he still has what it takes to fight, going against six kids less than half his age, causing them to punch and knock each other out while he blocks and twirls. It’s no small feat either—these kids are phenomenal kung fu athletes.
The fights at the end are riveting. Changing the age range from high school to middle school looked odd on paper, but the skill of these kids is unparalleled, adding a layer of cool though somewhat undercutting the good versus evil dynamic. They are only boys doing what their Master says, a man himself so nonexistent that the true enemy becomes Dre’s own ego and lack of focus. It’s a feel-good story, and, at the screening I attended, it garnered rapturous applause from a youthful audience. For me, though, Cobra Kai will always be my dojo of choice.
The Karate Kid 5/10
photography:
[1] Jackie Chan as "Mr. Han" and Jaden Smith as "Dre Parker" in Columbia Pictures' THE KARATE KID. Photo By: Jasin Boland
[2] Jaden Smith as "Dre Parker" and Taraji P.Henson as his mother "Sherry" in Columbia Pictures' THE KARATE KID. Photo By: Jasin Boland
