The Karate Kid
Director: Harald Zwart
With: Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson, Wenwen Han, Zhenwei Wang
The original Karate Kid was a pretty good movie with a nice turn by Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi, and an earnest and believable job by Ralph Macchio in the title role. This remake is bigger, more violent and both better and worse than the original.
Dre (Smith) and his mother Sherry (Henson) leave Detroit after the death of his father so mom can get a better job. In Beijing. We never know what exactly she does, but she can do it in China quicker than Detroit.
This leads to another anomaly: the martial art here is kung fu, not karate. But, hey.
Dre hates his school, where he is bullied by kids who attend a kung fu academy run by a fascist thug. (School motto: No Mercy) Worse, he falls for Meiying (Wenwen), a local girl who plays Bach on the violin and is friends with Dre’s chief tormentor, Cheng (Zhenwei).
This part mirrors the conflict in the first film, minus the exotic location. The Miyagi of this one is Mr. Han, a handyman and caretaker where Dre lives. He picks up on Dre’s plight, and inevitably takes the boy on as a student.
Remember “Wax on, wax off”? In this film it is: Jacket on, jacket off. (Didn’t anyone say that line aloud? Maybe they did.) Both are intended to teach the young hothead self-discipline, concentration and, not incidentally, the muscle memory for a kung fu move.
And, the climax is the same. Dre meeting Cheng in an open kung fu tournament, with the underdog Dre subject to dirty tactics from anyone he meets from Cheng’s school, up to the final match. There are even visual homages to the original movie in a stance that Dre takes in the finals, and the flies-with-chopsticks thing.
The violence in this film is sometimes shocking, given that the target audience is tweener girls with a Jaden Smith crush, and tweener boys looking for some screen action. Smith has much of the charm of his father and mother, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, and even some acting ability. Production values and photography are stunning, the acting good.
Jackie Chan, now aging beyond his years as an action hero, has always had a sweet nature and puckish humor in his work which could have been used to better advantage here, but Zwart is a C-list director, and the script could have been better.
An unabashed travelogue for China, Dre and Mr. Han practice picturesquely atop the Great Wall, among other fabulous locations. Wa-a-ay too long at well over two hours. Cutting 45 minutes out of this would have made a better movie, but the film makers had no such agenda. Still, with these caveats, you may decide your kid can handle the flaws. You might want to check out the original as well.
B-