I long ago gave up hand-wringing about Hollywood’s preoccupation with remakes. Still, the trailers for Harald Zwart’s remake of The Karate Kid, the 1984 underdog classic that introduced such priceless phrases as “Wax on, wax off” and “Sweep the leg!” into the pop-culture lexicon, set me ill at ease. To me the film seemed little more than a high-profile vanity project for child star Jaden Smith, son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, who for all we know gave him the movie as a Christmas gift, a $40 million stocking-stuffer. Pillage my childhood memories if you must, Hollywood, but damnit, at least show a little respect for the source material.
Much has changed in the update: Daniel Larusso is now Dre Parker; California’s San Fernando Valley is now Beijing, China; Mr. Miyagi is now Mr. Han; and karate is now kung fu. Most of the story beats and thematic elements, however, are essentially the same. After his single mother (Taraji P. Henson) gets a job transfer, 12-year-old Dre (Smith) is forced to move from his native Detroit to the unfamiliar climes of Beijing, where he’s besieged by a local group of pubescent fascists after being caught innocently flirting with a pretty schoolmate.
Dre’s tormentors, all of whom practice a peculiarly sadistic version of kung fu taught at the neighborhood martial arts academy, adhere vigorously to the “No weakness, no pain, no mercy” credo of their autocratic master. As such, they’re not about to let their puny prey off with just one humiliating beatdown. During a subsequent ass-whooping, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the eccentric maintenance man from Dre’s apartment building, comes to the rescue, fending off the ruthless urchins with some pretty fancy fighting moves of his own. After some cajoling, Mr. Han reluctantly agrees to teach the child kung fu, and several life lessons and inspirational montages later, a resurgent Dre finally faces up to his adversaries at a climactic kung fu tournament.
The case for nepotism in this new Karate Kid is not without merit. Though allegedly 11 years old, Smith doesn’t look a day over 10, and appears jarringly undersized for a 12-year-old. Seeing the baby-faced lad (he definitely takes after his mom in the looks department) get repeatedly brutalized by adolescent thugs twice his size gets uncomfortable, as do later scenes of him training shirtless, his torso the size of Chan’s forearm.
But it’s a minor quibble. In truth, Smith surpasses his predecessor Macchio in both acting ability and martial arts proficiency. Whereas Daniel-San’s fighting scenes in the original Karate Kid require a suspension of disbelief that diminishes his eventual triumph at the All-Valley Karate Championships (Even as a kid, I always suspected that the Cobra Kai kids were either sandbagging it, or their sensai was the worst in-game coach since Jim Tressel), Smith’s moves are both more authentic and more athletic. Moreover, he has the good sense not to collapse hysterically into a wailing heap at the slightest touch from an opponent, as Macchio so famously did.
The Karate Kid is every bit an unabashed crowd-pleaser -- which isn’t necessarily such a bad thing in a summer movie season that has thus far given audiences precious little to cheer for. At two-and-a-half hours, it takes far too long to get going and would have benefited from a more assured hand behind the camera. Zwart’s overemphasis on the bullying and fish-out-of-water elements becomes redundant, and the dialogue and culture-clash jokes border on embarrassing at times. But the meat of the story, the bond that forms between an unlikely kung fu teacher and his equally unlikely student, is undeniably affecting.
