I do not think that I ever saw the original The Karate Kid or at least, not in its entirety. Technically I was not allowed to watch movies as a kid, and this type of movie was not the kind that I was willing to risk getting punished for watching. (It was horror movies.) Also if I was going to watch a martial arts movie, I wanted to see experts, not some child learning. So when the remake hit theaters, I was not slightly tempted to pay to see it, but I did add it to my queue because I will watch anything that Jackie Chan is in. Also I love Taraji P. Henson, and it did not hurt that she played the mom.
I only watched the remake of The Karate Kid because Netflix notified me that it was going to get pulled on May 1, 2020 otherwise I may never have gotten around to it. My mom, who hates to watch fighting, actually was interested in watching it because apparently Jaden Smith got the transfer of Will Smith’s blanket approval of any movie that he appears in, which even Will no longer has, but not Red Table Talk—really mom? I am the only one in my household whose lead Smith is Jada Pinkett. Fun fact: Gammy, i.e. Jada’s mom, Adrienne Banfield-Jones, appears briefly in the beginning of the movie. I spotted her instantly! Technical side note: if you do watch this film on Netflix, remember to turn on English subtitles, or else you will miss a lot of the dialogue, and it was translated. I did not figure that out for awhile then had to rewind and rewatch a lot of scenes, which was not worth it.
The Karate Kid shifts location and race bends. Instead of karate, the title probably should have changed to The Kung Fu kid. A Detroit family moves to Beijing, and the son, Dre, gets bullied until an understated kung fu master decides to teach him how to make peace with his enemies.
I am not a fan of most child actors, Jaden Smith included. You can see the gears moving as they work. Their acting style is wooden, not organic. A CGI created character would have more life. It does not matter how great the child actually is as a person. Acting is a completely different skill. If a child is the star of the movie, especially a boy, I know that I am less likely to get into the movie unless the child actor is a thespian. With a run time of two hours twenty minutes with Jaden playing the protagonist, I knew that watching The Karate Kid would be challenging, and I was not wrong. His jokes fell flat. The random acts of dancing were painful. I came for kung fu fighting, but I did not even think that aspect of the film through. One of the many reasons that I did not enjoy watching The Phantom Menace was because it vaguely felt like watching child abuse because Baby Vader was so little. Jaden was tiny in this film, but the ass whooping was grown. So there are no weight classes in kung fu, huh? Damn, these kids are going to murder someone! It was serious. How is health care in Beijing?
Also The Karate Kid decides that viewers would be more interested in Jaden having a little relationship with a violin prodigy, which I absolutely was not. I am not interested in watching babies kiss. Ew. We could have gotten to the underlying reason for bullying without the miscegenation storyline. Kids do not need a reason to be evil. I would have settled for them just being racist because racism is always trendy. There is one scene in which Henson and Chan go to a festival, and even though I absolutely did not come for or want any romantic storyline, I actually could see it because Chan looks good with a little facial hair. They were kind of cute as a couple. I have no idea why the film hastily dumped the initial storyline of a possible friendship with his neighbor, Harry, another ex pat who had to move to the area because of his parents’ job. It was kind of sad that the protagonist did not have any friends who were not adults, and it was really just Chan’s character, Mr. Han. I am a big fan of intergenerational relationship, but diversify, diversify, diversify.
If you only want to watch The Karate Kid to see Chan do his thing, and Jaden become a great fighter, prepare to do a lot of fast forwarding—roughly an hour or more depending on whether or not you cosign Chan whopping a bunch of bad kids’ asses, which I was. In China, are parents still allowed to physically punish their kids? I know nothing about Beijing, but I cannot believe that their kids are as bad as ours and would dare to lift a finger against an elder so while that part of the movie did not seem credible to me, it was when I finally got invested in the story line, and at that point, the story becomes thoroughly engrossing. It would have made a perfectly entertaining ninety-minute movie.
Chan is so good in The Karate Kid. He was understated funny and was definitely acting. I love the way that he reimagined the training sequences. His facial expressions are the best even when he is not doing much. For me, he is the star of the movie, and he did not disappoint. I was surprised that we did not get more scenes between Chan and the bullies’ teacher, who also did a great job giving face, “If you don’t beat that kid now, I will beat you later.” The adults definitely stole the show, and I clearly wanted them to rescue me from watching a child protagonist.
The Karate Kid’s location, Beijing, was an unspoken character in the film. The vibrant outdoor life was the real uncredited performance that keeps the story moving. I loved how most of the action took place outdoors, and it was just nice to see locations that we do not ordinarily see in films.
I know that no one except me cared about this storyline, but I was a little disappointed that we never saw Henson at work adjusting to her new atmosphere. An adult learning Chinese and moving to a foreign country for a job seemed like a great movie idea. I am the only one that wants a sidequel. No one cares about the mom’s story. I am stuck following Dre, who was honestly bad at everything yet overconfident in his abilities and had horrible ideas. I am not going to try and defend myself against some kids using television taught martial arts skills in China on the off chance that I picked the wrong one. Do a background check first.
I guess that I should try to see the original film to see how it measured up, but I do not care. The Karate Kid was too long and needed a lot of editing, but ultimately entertaining and delivered on excellent fight scenes. I would not recommend it unless you do not mind kids in movies and love Chan.