Smith Month: Mini Review - Karate Kid

How about a Smith Month review without any Will Smith in it? Here’s Karate Kid, the remake.

Yup, Jaden’s on his own in this one as stars in a remake of an 80’s movie that, I haven’t seen, I’ll be honest. But this isn’t a comparison piece, I want to judge this movie on its own merits. Released in 2010, the movie got a mixed reception, 65% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average 6.7/10. But financially it was successful, getting $365m on a $40m budget.

Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his mother, Sherry Parker (Taraji P Henson) move from Detroit to China. Dre struggles to fit in and finds himself the victim of a group of students, trained by Master Li (Yu Rongguang) and lead by Cheng (Zhenwei Wang). Seeking means to defend himself, he’s taught by Master Han (Jackie Chan) and is entered into a big fight tournament to prove himself.

OK, let’s start with an obvious critique of this movie. Karate is a Japanese art, not a Chinese one, most of the movie actually uses Chinese Kung Fu rather than Karate. The title, Karate Kid, is a lie, but it maintains a lot of plot elements from the original Karate Kid movie that I might see it as justified to keep it as brand recognition.

I am not against remakes if they stand out on their own and by that I mean they need to be good in their own right, and not just a plain retread of the original. And this does add a few new elements: for a start, the ages are a lot younger. And with that I’d like to counter a point the Nostalgia Critic made about the ages with the simple fact that they’re in China, and area of China with a massive kung-fu academy. Culturally China is different enough from America that the age/reputation thing really doesn’t matter.

Let’s talk about Jackie Chan, we know he’s a kung-fu master although he rarely gets to show his skills in this movie aside from fighting off 5 school-children and a deleted ending with him fighting the teacher which is rather confusing given what had happened up to that point and didn’t really make sense with the narrative for his character. Still, he’s a good teacher, his method of making the mundane kung-fu may seem odd at first but it’s soon demonstrated exactly how helpful it is.

He also gets a pretty tragic backstory to explain why he’s a little more closed off and unwilling to help, he was driving his car and crashed it whilst he and his wife were arguing, his wife and son died in the crash and he blames himself for it. Whilst it’s hard for Dre to relate to that given his age, it’s nice that Dre manages to help him as much as he helps Dre, which feeds into the idea of balance that’s central to these movies. Having Jackie Chan as a kung fu master is a good choice, because everything he says carries that era of believability that makes his wisdom feel real, even if some of the stunts don’t, but we’ll get to that.

To Dre himself then, Jaden Smith gives another really good performance and proves here he can act in a leading role with a bit more meat to it than The Pursuit of Happyness. Dre is a kid through and through, he’s tough, not always obedient (which I figured would factor more into his training since fighting is a discipline in and of itself) but he’s kind, compassionate, funny and doesn’t back down from a fight. He’s an overall likeable character. And if Jaden is handling some of the martial arts stuff, he really must’ve worked for it.

What I’m less fond of is the romantic angle. And this is very much an age thing that Chinese culture doesn’t counter since Dre himself is still American. It does a little to humble Dre but I’m not entirely sure it was necessary since the training, in and of itself, was doing that. It was also the bully being a family friend that lead to most of the plot, but I don’t think that in itself is enough of a reason to have it around, they dropped other supporting characters, so they probably should’ve done the same with the love interest.

The fish out of water element is handled well, it’s clear fairly early on that Dre didn’t want to leave, refusing to learn much Chinese on the way which works against him later on since the only people he meets who speak English are the love interest, a guy who talks in one scene and disappears for most of the movie and Master Han himself.

The actual fighting looks decent, although I feel there may some wire-work involved. I like how Dre outsmarted his bully and used his techniques against him, it feels more real than some fight move pulled out of the writers’ ass.

Karate Kid (2010) is a good movie, there are a few factors that hold it back from being great, particularly the romance angle and certain other disposable characters. But overall it’s a fun experience with some great martial arts.

Rating 70/100