The Karate Kid (**½)

Directed by: Harald Zwart

Starring: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Zhenwei Wang, Yu Rongguang

Seen: September 24^th 2010

**½ Out of ****

The Karate (Kung-Fu) Kid, or as I like to call it, The Dramatic Kid (more on that later), is a loose remake of the 1984 movie starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita. Macchio has now been replaced by Will Smith’s rather talented son, Jaden Smith; and Morita by the much loved Jackie Chan.

When Dre Parker (Smith) and his mother Sherry (Henson) move to China, Dre feels his world is coming to an end with all the changes, and he even manages to pick up a bully on his first day in China. When he approaches MeiYing (Han) one day for an innocent teenager chat, he is accosted and eventually beaten up by Cheng (Wang). The adolescent romance between Dre and MeiYing grows, but at the same time the torment from Cheng continues as Dre cannot always control himself, rather opting to try and get Cheng back than simply avoiding him. One day when one of these beatings becomes pretty brutal, Cheng and his gang are interrupted by Mr. Han (Chan), the maintenance man at Dre’s building. His skill at dispatching the group of six teenagers reveals him as a Kung Fu master, and Dre immediately starts pestering him, either to teach him, or to get the boys to somehow stop bullying him. When he tries the latter, Li (Rongguang), Cheng’s Kung-Fu master, intimidates Mr. Han into making a choice that will greatly affect Dre; he is entered him into an open Kung Fu tournament.

Here starts Dre’s first training sessions, a good hour into the movie, and the next twenty minutes of Dre’s training consists of him literally hanging his jacket on a wooden peg, dropping it on the floor, putting it on, taking it off, and hanging it on the peg again – over and over again. Similar to the spinning drums in an earlier Karate Kid movie, this pays dividends, as after who knows how long doing this, Dre suddenly has more Kung-Fu skill than you would guess, the muscle memory built up from the jacket exercise has been elementary (and apparently pretty powerful) Kung Fu all along, and will take him a long way in the Kung Fu tournament he is to take part in. It takes almost an entire overlong movie to reach the tournament, and even though the tournament is well-presented, it still feels like it took too long to get there.

I mentioned the phrase The Dramatic Kid earlier: this movie has many melodramatic moments sprinkled liberally all through its running time, and it seems that the brilliant Taraji P. Henson’s only function in this movie is to swoon with extreme concern for her poor little son – she adds little else to the movie, apart from a heart-warming moment or two when Dre’s progression becomes apparent. Jaden Smith also does a pretty emotional portrayal for a kid trying to become someone who will not be bullied – emotion is perceived to be a weakness for bullies to home in on, and should, as such, not be openly paraded.

Like most sport movies, and like the 1980’s Karate Kid movies in particular, the 2010 movie leaves the viewer with a warm feeling of victory for the good, and the defeat of evil. The bullies are effectively bullied into not only submission, but into a change of view – they become nice almost immediately after losing. The Karate Kid is aimed squarely at the demographic I belonged to when the first one made it’s debut back in 1984: young teenagers who can easily identify with the characters in the movie, and that is fine, as teenagers can see this and enjoy it as possibly one of their nostalgic picks in years to come. I will however hold a special place in my heart for the original Karate Kid movies, even if I do believe deep down that this one is their technical and emotional superior.