Movie review: The Karate Kid (2010)

To begin with: I'm a shameless fan of the original film, so a remake already has tremendous shoes to try to fill. I'm biased and will freely admit it. The original is so perfect in it's cheesy 1980's glory. On the other hand: I'm a shameless Jackie Chan fan. I've become less a fan of his more modern (and horribly over-commercialized) work, but still - the man knows how to put together a fight scene.

The good:

*Jackie Chan did not disappoint. Again, he had tremendous shoes to fill here, and he stepped up to it. Is he Mr. Miyagi? No. Does he take the role, make it his own, and create something surprisingly good? Absolutely. This version of Mr. Miyagi being drunk and sad is surprisingly well-done. There's some emotional depth that I think Chan doesn't normally get to go into in his typical roles, but he certainly can do it.

*I won't spoil anything, but there's a whole sub-plot involving cars which is a surprisingly subdued and clever hommage to the original. We do see a car being waxed, but it's not just a shout-out, it's truly a new little story, which I was pleasantly surprised by.

*Some of the fight and training scenes are pretty decent; at least one of them was obviously highly influenced by Chan's style, if he didn't choreograph it himself. Some nice creative use of scenery, harsh enough to be interesting but clever enough to not be too scary for kids (or adults).

*Similarly, I was pleasantly surprised by how some of the kids pulled off their fight scenes.

The bad:

*C'mon, the kid's 12. You don't need a love interest.

*Jaden Smith...has potential as an actor. I'm sure, given who his father is (it may be an unpopular opinion, but Will Smith can give a decent performance), he can get all the coaching he needs. That said, he's young and I didn't for a second feel that he was talented enough to carry a film as a lead. A minor player? I think he'd be perfectly respectable. If he keeps at it, in five or ten years? Sure, seems possible. But I just didn't find him convincing for most of the movie.

*Beyond the fact that a story about preteens does not need a love interest, the whole girl subplot was just kind of...lame. It basically just spat out some stereotypes for us and gave us a montage of two kids running around Beijing. The whole story could've been cut and the film would've been better overall.

*I have no first-hand experience with Kung Fu, no with recreational martial arts in China, but, uh...a youth tournament attracts such a crowd that it fills up what looks like a very large gymnasium? Really? Hundreds of spectators, an MC, big flashy video screen displaying custom graphics? TKD matches at the Olympics barely attract crowds like that.

The ugly:

*Speaking of the tournament...okay. Again, I'm not terribly familiar with kung fu, and certainly not the sport aspect of it in China. But the tournament appeared very much to be a no-holds-barred type affair. With - well, okay, I'll be generous and just say one great big under-18 division. And they wear absolutely no protective gear. And one competitor repeatedly during one match needs to be physically dragged off his opponent after the referee calls for them to break, and he gets...a warning? And then later disqualified for injuring his opponent with an illegal move, when the score is tied, so the injured opponent...loses? And kicks to the head, knee and back are all legal? And did I mention the part where you have 12-year-olds fighting in a full-contact match with no protective gear? Reeaaally? Willing suspension of disbelief will maybe deal with the enormous crowd of devoted fans, but come on. This is some sort of youth TMA tournament, not an MMA cage match.

*Overall, I got the feeling that the creative team couldn't decide whether they wanted to be a new film which paid tribute to the original, or simply a remake.

*Pleaaaaaase stop conflating various martial arts. Karate is not kung fu. I'm not demanding any real accuracy about the actual style, but please please please make some teeny tiny little effort and get the name right.

Overall conclusion: It's a summer movie. Jaden Smith has potential, but isn't there yet. I kind of wish I'd waited and seen it on dollar day, rather than at the regular $3.50 price. Were it not for it's namesake, I think it would've been a total flop, but there's enough references in there to keep it from being a total flop. I've seen worse, but they could've done much better.