Hit me baby one more time

Karate Kid was the ultimate underdog movie — barring perhaps Rocky, also by director John G Avildsen (gee, I wonder what his childhood was like.) It gave the old David/Goliath story a new spin with the introduction of karate, a discipline which rendered strength irrelevant and allowed pipsqueak heroes to vanquish hulking adversaries with a single well-placed blow or crafty manoeuvre. It reaffirmed our belief in the power of discipline and, despite the veneer of eastern mystique, at its core was the very American “Can-do” spirit.

The original Karate Kid spawned three sequels, and as martial arts overtook the popular imagination, the ‘80s and ‘90s saw the rising popularity of the Ninja Turtles franchise, and other martial arts movies which cashed in on the popularity of the genre like the 3 Ninjas and its sequels.

This remake of the beloved ‘80s classic is slavishly faithful to the original. The one deviation, the relocation to China, adds no substance to the story. There is nothing here of China that one wouldn’t see in a tourism ad. China, it seems, is added in the hope of justifying the re-telling but does not live up to the task and ends up being a big, unwieldy prop. Also, the martial arts form that the hero learns to ward off bullies and impress the girl he likes is not Karate but Kung Fu. If that didn’t warrant a re-think of the name, I can’t imagine what would.

None of which is to say that the new Karate Kid is a bad movie. In fact, it is entirely entertaining from start to finish. Taraji P Henson plays a single mum who relocates to China with her son for work. Jaden Smith is Dre Parker the smart alec protagonist with oodles of charm. As he develops a crush on his pretty classmate, Mei Ying (Wenwen Han), he falls foul of Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), the class bully, who also fancies her. Dre turns to Mr Han (Jackie Chan), the maintenance man, who is a secret Kung Fu master and asks him to train him in self-defense.

What follows is the coming-of-age tale that we expect from Karate Kid: hours of seemingly mindless tasks that frustrate Dre and lead him to believe that he is learning nothing of Kung Fu, until he magically discovers that he’s built muscle mass and developed reflexive responses, the surrogate father-son relationship that develops between Han and Dre in the process and the final face-off between Dre and Cheng.

The problem is that Karate Kid fulfills every expectation without going beyond any of them. There are no surprises here. Still, for a venture that was envisioned solely as the launching pad for Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s supremely charismatic son, this is a pretty good movie. And in that respect at least it succeeds. There might be many 12-year-olds that have the precociousness of Jaden Smith, but none have the parents to work it like Jaden’s do. On the whole, though Karate Kid lacks the off-the-kilter charm of the memorable original, it will take the tale to a new generation of children.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2010.