The Karate Kid (Jaden Smith, Jackie Chan, Taraji P. Henson) – Over the years, I have taken a lot of grief from friends for making The Karate Kid, the 1984 movie directed by Rocky Oscar winner John G. Avildsen, one of my five favorite movies of all time. I love that movie. And yes, I still cry every time I see it when the camera fixates on the majestic face of Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi) at the end. So it was with apprehension and low expectations that I went to see the remake (incidentally, at its first showing on opening day).
Wow, what a magnificent job of re-creating the first film while modernizing it, setting it in China, and bringing all the tension, man-love, and depth back to the big screen. This time, Dutch director Harald Zwart added wonderful scenic views of China (the movie was a collaboration with the China Film Board) and lost a bit of the sometimes-cheesy dialogue. But to his credit, he kept a great deal of the original plot intact. There is the evil sensei of the trained-to-maim thugs who rule the school that our hero, Dre Parker (Jaden Smith of The Pursuit of Happyness), has been thrown into. Mom is transferred to Beijing (in the original, it was LA) and takes her son with her without much worrying about his feelings. Dre immediately finds trouble as the American outsider who befriends the beautiful Chinese girl. The bad kids target him, and he gets the heck beat out of him. To the rescue comes the maintenance guy in the apartment building in which he lives. Played by international superstar and martial arts master Jackie Chan, Mr. Han isn’t quite as sage as Mr. Miyagi but he uses almost the same technique (not exactly wax-on-wax-off, paint-the-fence, and sand-the-floor but close). His personal secret remains essentially intact, too, which when discovered by Dre, motivates him to work harder. The role of Dre’s mom, played here by Oscar nominee Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), is beefed up from the part that Randee Heller played in the original. The young girl, Meiying (Wanwan Han in her first role), looks vaguely like Tamlyn Tomita, who played the love interest in The Karate Kid: Part 2. The rest of the film plays close to the original as well but I won’t tell you if he wins (as Daniel LaRusso did in the original) or loses (as Rocky did).
As for the performances, Jaden Smith proves that he may be a force in the business for a long time. His parents, of course, are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and they have created a natural. That was evident in The Pursuit of Happyness, when he was billed as Jaden Christopher Syre Smith. Hand it to the kid: he worked really hard to learn kung fu (it’s not karate). And while I preferred Ralph Macchio because he was so raw and not talented as an actor, Jaden Smith knows the camera is always there, which I think he will grow out of over time. Jackie Chan is really quite good here, shedding the recent tongue-in-cheek comedy roles and his prior one-dimensional martial arts stereotype. This part fit him perfectly and Morita would have been proud had he lived to see it.
Heck, I even liked the largely hip-hop soundtrack. The final song is performed by teen sensation Justin Bieber and the young Smith (his former rapper father is proud, I’m sure). There is everything to like here. And even if you don’t worship the original, you should like this one. Plus, you can take the kids even if there is a little bad language.