Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) and his mother move from Detroit to Bejing, China to start a new life when his mother gets transferred. While in China Dre tries almost too hard to fit in and instead alienates himself further prompting him to become a punching bag for the local bullies at his school. When Dre attempts to fight back he is aided by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the maintenance man turned kung fu hero, and in an attempt to gain respect from the bullies he is entered into an open kung fu tournament with very little time to train. The majority of the story is that of Mr. Han training Dre to prepare his tournament and teaching him that when you get knocked down you should always get back up. The film than obviously concludes with Dre at the tournament.
I'll start with my praises before I get into what I didn't like about this film. The first praise of this film is Jackie Chan's performance as Mr. Han. Chan, for me, has been hit-and-miss in his films but he really pulls through in this one and holds the film together. The directing was phenomenal as well which was a surprise to me. Harald Zwart managed to capture the great beauty of China as well as create a great movie for the family to enjoy. Zwart was the dead-ended brains behind such misses as The Pink Panther 2, Agent Cody Banks and a slew of Dutch misses; so when this film turned out to be thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable I was very surprised at how Zwart seems to be turning his game around. This is also the first official screenplay turned into film by writer Christopher Murphey; and at times you can tell that a novice writer is penning this script as some of the dialogue is god-awful, yet it manages to stand on it's own two-feet for the most part.
Jaden Smith holds his own throughout the film, although I constantly find him to be very egotistical and at the beginning of the movie I sure wanted to beat him up as much as the bullies at the school did. His character really isn't a likable character until he starts to learn respect by mid-end film... but it's almost too long. I almost gave up hope on liking his character, but eventually by the end I was won over when Dre learned a touch of humility.
Now for what I didn't like; and while it may seem like a lot it really doesn't affect the outcome of the movie too much. There are characters that are absolutely unnecessary. The 'white kid' that Dre befriends immediately in China is a useless companion and his acting skills are as great as a brick. I know that Luke Carberry (the white kid) is only a young actor and I shouldn't rag too hard on the guy; but if you're making a multi-million dollar blockbuster of a film and you have a child actor that sucks, you should have the balls just to fire him rather than cut him out from 90% of the plot making his character useless. The same goes for another kid actor at the beginning of the film who in Detroit gives Dre his skateboard. The dialogue there made me want to puke. Regardless of the few minor character glitches the movie was also about 20 minutes too long. My ass fell asleep at about an hour and forty-five minutes and I was ready for a wrap-up but found out I had another 30 minutes to go.
It doesn't mean that the movie was bad, far from it. It was quite enjoyable. It could have been better though and when you're trying to remake a classic you need to make sure that you're film is going to be solid and a respectable remake. For the most part The Karate Kid pulled that off.
It's a great family film. Young and old will enjoy it.
Check it out!
3.5 out of 5 stars
You didn't plug our unofficial title - foreshame.
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