The Karate Kid

[sanjuro_ronin]

I doubt I will bother to see it, I have to be honest.
Part of the reason is the ridiculous title and the other part is that I knoe how it ends and don't care.
Not a good thing for a movie.

[yutyeesam]

I doubt I will bother to see it, I have to be honest.
Part of the reason is the ridiculous title and the other part is that I knoe how it ends and don't care.
Not a good thing for a movie.

I think you'll end up seeing it. I'm not going to try to resist, I've found it futile.

[GeneChing]

Goldstein sees the Chollywood angle in part with this picture. It's a bit slanted, but at least he sees it. If you don't get that angle, you don't understand where Asian cinema is at right now at all.

The Big Picture
Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture
Is the China of 'The Karate Kid' the real China?
June 3, 2010 | 5:38 pm

I took my son to see "The Karate Kid" Wednesday night and I found myself with a lot of explaining to do. Don't get me wrong, we had a good time, since if you're a stone-cold Jackie Chan fan, like my 12-year-old, its worth the price of admission to see Chan give a nicely nuanced, almost totally effortless performance as a mysterious maintenance man who turns out to be a canny kung fu instructor, teaching a forlorn American kid (played by Jaden Smith) how to find himself by mastering the art of kung fu.

If you've only seen Chan mug his way through the "Rush Hour" movies or breathtakingly defy gravity in Hong Kong classics like "Super Cop: Police Story 3," the role is a treat, since he gives a remarkably restrained performance, walking slowly and gingerly, like a man who's broken nearly every bone in his body, then rousing himself into action when wrongs must be righted.

But back to my original point: Why did I have so much explaining to do?

First off, as my kid asked afterward, if the movie is all about kung fu, why is it called "The Karate Kid"? He's seen the original 1984 "Karate Kid," so he has kind of figured out that the movie is a brand, but still -- why not call it "The Kung Fu Kid"? At least it would be accurate, since almost any 12-year-old can tell the difference between kung fu and karate. I had to explain that in Hollywood, brand trumps accuracy and authenticity every time, which is why -- according to this recent story by my colleague John Horn -- when Sony tried to change the title, the film's producer, Jerry Weintraub, said essentially, no dice. (He also produced the original.)

Speaking of Weintraub, the film offers an intriguing lesson in Hollywood insider politics. My son is a huge Will Smith fan, so he knows that Smith is one of the biggest stars in the business. On the other hand, he's never heard of Weintraub, who's more of a behind-the-scenes force in the industry (but not so behind the scenes that he hasn't been all over TV and radio recently shilling for his memoir, "When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories From a Persuasive Man"). So how was it possible that, when it came to display the film's producer credits, that the biggest star in Hollywood had to share a crowded credit block with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith and his production company partners, James Lassiter and Ken Stovitz, while Weintraub got a producer credit block all to himself?

Ah, my son, that is a sign of true power in action. I'm betting that Smith and Co. tried to negotiate a better credit-block deal, but once again, Weintraub said, no dice.

But the brand that gets the best treatment in the movie is the brand of China. For Sony, the idea of having the film set in China was a huge inducement to make the film, since it gave the studio the opportunity to bolster the film's enormous global appeal. Finding a way to have your summer movie play in China is a rare opportunity indeed, since the country is so restrictive that it only allows roughly 20 non-Chinese movies into its theaters each year. By cutting China's state film arm into the action -- China Film put up $5 million, roughly 1/8 of the movie's budget -- Sony was allowed to actually film in China, even in such normally inaccessible locations as the Great Wall and the Forbidden City.

Of course, in return, China clearly had veto power over any issues involving the film's portrayal of the country. I know that "Karate Kid" is intended as pure entertainment, but it operates as a wonderfully organic propaganda tool for China, presenting a largely sanitized version of the country. There are no political dissidents, no shots of environmental disasters, no one trying in vain to reach thousands of restricted Internet sites.

Although there is a plot wrinkle involving a pack of teenage bullies who prey on Jaden's character, the rest of the populace is portrayed as happy, contented and well-fed, without any complaints, even about the unbearable air and the hideous traffic. The parks are full of people exercising and playing sports, the schools are full of well-mannered, upwardly-mobile kids. Jaden's romance with a local Chinese girl is as chaste as anything you'd see on the Disney Channel (though as Horn's story points out, not chaste enough for the Chinese censors, who made the filmmaker cut out a teeny-tiny kiss between the kids for the Chinese version of the film).

So if Sony benefits by getting access to the huge Chinese market, China benefits too, by having its society presented in the film as it was during the Summer Olympics, as a benign place of wondrous growth and unlimited potential.

I had only one other small piece of explaining to do. After the film was over, my son said, "Dad, that was a really good movie, but why was it soooooo long?" (By our count, it was well over 2 hours.) I didn't really have a good answer for that, since, well, like so many other movies these days, there really was no good reason for it being that long. All I could say was: "I guess if you have to go all the way to China to make your movie, you want to get your money's worth."

[GeneChing]

The Karate Kid Action Trailer in HD on MySpace

I've had a few days to think over the film now and recant a little of what I said above. Overall, the remake is really enjoyable. Jackie and Jaden both turn in superb performances. All the scenes in China are spectacular. It's the first major Hollywood release that starts to capture the beauty and clutter that is modern China.

My earlier comment on the CR was misguided. Here I've been trying to direct everyone's attention to the international marketing of this film and I totally disregarded that with my CR comment. For that prize box office of the China market, they aren't going to go after the CR. I think that comes from my own attachment to the original - Miyagi's skeleton in the closet was his WWII experience and the internment, which is a topic very close to my own heart as my family was deeply affected by that. In retrospect, Han's spin on the skeleton was actually quite poignant, very Chinese in it's poetry, and much more appropriate to seize that Chinese market.

The only place that the film fails is the ending. We know how it's going to end and the remake follows that note for note. It kills the suspense. I would have rather they deviated from the original, put some spin on the ending to make it fresh. The only shift is the finals are more like a videogame in their presentation and their choreography. I was never happy with the ending of the original as it undoes all the fortune-cookie peacenik wisdom that Miyagi spouts in the rest of the film. I never believed that Kreese's students would be regretful in the end either. The new version makes that work a little better (Yu Rongguang is great as Li btw, as psycho as Kreese in his own weird way). Ultimately, the new Karate Kid succeeds whenever it's about Jaden, Jackie and China. Whenever it defaults to the original, it descends to rehash. Nevertheless, Jaden, Jackie and China take up the bulk of the film, and that's totally worth the price of admission.

Jackie Chan's 'Karate Kid' kicks acting career into higher gear
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
BEVERLY HILLS — Jackie Chan's body is a road map of misery.

He touches the back of his head, where his skull was fractured during one martial arts scene. The nose, which he tweaks, has been broken twice, along with his cheekbones, jaw and every rib. Both kneecaps were cracked, two ankles have snapped, and he has broken most of the bones in both hands.

"If it's on my body, I probably broke it," Chan, 56, says at the rooftop restaurant of the Beverly Hills Montage Hotel. "But you have to remember: I've been acting for 48 years. You're going to break bones."

Acting and injuries usually aren't a package. Robert De Niro or Al Pacino would never win a scar-off with Chan. Instead, Chan wants to become more like De Niro and Pacino. The Karate Kid features the least amount of fighting Chan has logged in a movie.

And he hopes the trend continues.

"I've been fighting, fighting, fighting, until no one thinks I can do anything different," Chan says. "But I can. I'm not just a fighter. I'm an actor."

He gets to convince audiences on Friday with The Karate Kid, a movie that Chan says he was reluctant to make until he learned it would be produced by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and star their son, Jaden.

"When I first heard about it, I was thinking 'How am I going to play the kid?' Because that's who does all the fighting," Chan says with a laugh. "When Will says it was for the teacher part, I said yes right away."

Karate Kid director Harald Zwart says he didn't realize how much Chan wanted to act until he got on set.

"We knew we were going to have great fight scenes, because you've got the greatest fighter in your movie," Zwart says. "But he isn't who he appears to be on camera. He's very respectful, looks you in the eye, wants to learn. I realized he was the complete actor."

Chan is hoping that some scenes — including one in which he breaks down — will draw attention.

"Directors are asking me, 'Do another Rush Hour, do another Rush Hour,' " Chan says. "But that doesn't help you grow as an actor. That's boring. I know how to do that. What am I supposed to do? Star in Rush Hour 20?"

Chan says he learned there was more to do in 1982, when he saw An Officer and a Gentleman.

"I was expecting a big fight scene," Chan says. "You know how many (punches) are thrown? One! And it's a great movie. That's what I want to do."

He gets to do a little of that in his native China. "I can do some acting there, but it's not the same," Chan says. "American actors, they can work so long on a single scene. That's how you get better."

In China, he is Brad Pitt or bigger. He usually has to eat lunch in his car to prevent a mob scene.

Here, "people know who I am, but they want me to show them a fighting move."

Jaden Smith wanted to learn a few. The 12-year-old worked for three months with Chan and continues today. "I lucked out," Jaden says. "How many people get to learn to fight from the best?"

Chan takes over the Pat Morita role but plays Mr. Han, not Mr. Miyagi.

"All I've wanted is this chance," he says. "The Smith family gave that to me. Now I can show I'm not just Mr. Miyagi. I'm Jackie Chan."

[GeneChing]

Pics and vids on this site - click the link.

Ralph Macchio Reveals ‘Mixed Feelings’ About ‘Karate Kid’ Remake
LOS ANGELES, Calif. --
“Wax on, wax off” is now “Jacket on, jacket off,” and the original star of “The Karate Kid,” Ralph Macchio, wasn’t so sure the reboot — starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan — was a good idea.

“It’s like mixed feelings. At first, I felt old. Number one, you feel old when they start remaking your stuff,” Ralph, 48, told Access Hollywood at “The Karate Kid” premiere on Monday night in LA.

“Once I got passed the fact that there’s a whole new generation, it was more about, ‘OK, you can retell this story because it’s a beautiful story,’” the actor, who played Daniel Larusso in the original three films, continued. “It’s a testament to the legacy that we created that we didn’t even know we were creating. I don’t look at it as the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. It’s not the passing of the torch as much as it is the celebration of a great story.”

Ralph, who brought 14-year-son Daniel (named after his character) to the movie last night, recalled that the first “Karate Kid,” didn’t have a star-studded Hollywood premiere like Monday’s lavish event.

“We didn’t have a big premiere for that movie, it was a little sleeper. I spoke to the writer [Robert Mark Kamen] earlier and he said, ‘Tell me how the after party is. Ours lasted 26 years.’” Ralph told Access. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know the magic that was happening and the Pat Morita performance [as Mr. Miyagi] and all the Cobra Kai and ‘wax on, wax off’ and catching flies with your chopsticks and the crane just became part of everyone’s childhood and that’s what I’m here celebrating.”

Access also caught up with Jackie, who plays Jaden’s mentor Mr. Han, in the reboot.

“When we make ‘The Karate Kid,’ we just want a new ‘Karate Kid.’ It’s not the old one,” he explained. “So, I’m not Miyagi. I’m just Jackie Chan.”

The movie’s star, Jaden, said he enjoyed shooting overseas despite a few language barriers.

“I just loved it in China… I just had a great time,” Jaden told Access. “The people were nice. Nobody spoke English, but I still just had a great time. I got by.”

Movie Review
The Karate Kid (2010)
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman | Jun 09, 2010
Details Release Date: Jun 11, 2010; With: Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith

When a child star is cute and has a few instinctual acting moves, that's probably enough to get him by. Jaden Smith, who stars in the new remake of The Karate Kid, scores on both counts, but he also has something that's rare to see in a child actor. He's got presence. As Dre Parker, a pensive and fatherless 12-year-old from Detroit whose mother (Taraji P. Henson) gets transferred to the forbidding city of Beijing (the extreme move isn't really explained — I mean, couldn't she have been sent off to, you know, Denver?), Smith holds the screen while doing next to nothing, just standing there, silent and inquisitive, trying to figure out an angle on the situation that's closing in on him.

Smith, of course, is the son of Hollywood royalty (his parents are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith), and you don't have to look hard to see traces, especially, of his father — the cool glare of appraisal, the quickness of his fury. With his nifty cornrows (a junior rapper's 'do that marks how much he's grown up since The Pursuit of Happyness), Smith looks like an intensely aware goldfish. As Dre, he gets knocked down by bullies and drawn to the sweet sparkle of a teen violinist, but whomever he shares the screen with, he combines a kid's directness with an adult's way of holding himself in check. Though it's not too varied a performance, Smith, like his father, acts with an emotional ease that's almost gymnastic.

A remake of the 1984 go-for-it classic, the new Karate Kid is longer than the original film (it's 140 minutes) and a couple of shades more downbeat, with Dre as a lonely Odd Kid Out in the bustling bureaucratic China that is his new home. Jackie Chan has a corresponding melancholy as the maintenance man who teaches Dre the art of kung fu. (Yes, they should have called it The Kung Fu Kid — but you don't mess with brand titles like this one.) All in all, The Karate Kid is a more somber, less playful movie than the original, but at heart it's the same old irresistible candy corn.

I did, for a while, miss the sly, poker-faced humor that Pat Morita brought to the role of Mr. Miyagi. When Chan's Mr. Han begins Dre's training by ordering him to hang his jacket on a hook, then throw it on the floor, pick it up, and do it all again and again, it's a variation on the wax-on, wax-off gimmickry of the first film. Morita, though, let us know that he was enjoying the slightly sadistic joke of the Zen discipline he was enforcing. Chan, in a scruffy goatee, plays Han as very serious, almost morose, in his mission. He makes the guru-mentor slightly damaged goods; Han needs this kid as much as the kid needs him. Their earnestness grows on you, though. The bond these two share is sincere and touching.

The movie builds, of course, to the big kung fu tournament, in which Dre finally faces down a bully who has been trained to fight with ''no mercy.'' It's a piece of inspirational hokum that works nicely, though I do wish the film had been a bit more ingenious about shoehorning in the famous Ralph Macchio ''crane'' stance. That said, The Karate Kid is fun, and believable, on the most important level: It convinces us that Jaden Smith has what it takes to fight his way to the top.

[GeneChing]

Thumbs up from Ebert

Ebert: 'Karate Kid' stands up to original
By ROGER EBERT
Chicago Sun-Times
Updated: 06/09/2010 04:54:24 PM EDT

If you've seen "The Karate Kid" (1984), the memories will come back during this 2010 remake of the original. That's a compliment. The original story was durable enough to inspire three sequels, and now we have an entertaining version filmed mostly on location in China, with 56-year-old Jackie Chan in the role of Mr. Miyagi.

The original film was one of its year's best movies. The new one lacks the perfect freshness of that one; there aren't many surprises as it follows the 1984 almost point by point. But here is a lovely and well-made film that stands well on its own feet. The Chinese locations add visual interest, there are scenes of splendor in mountains and on the Great Wall, and the characters are once again engaging.

The original film's greatest asset was the Oscar- nominated performance by Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. Jackie Chan is so famous that it can come as no surprise here when Mr. Han, a reclusive janitor, reveals a hidden talent for the martial arts. But Chan has never been a strutting, macho fighter onscreen; his charm comes from a self-kidding quality. Here he does a good job of cooling down his usual cheerfulness and keeping his cards hidden.

In the role of his young pupil, Jaden Smith, son of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, has a natural screen presence that glows. Dre Parker is calmer than the skitterish kid played by Ralph Macchio, but so much smaller than his opponents that we can well believe his fear of a bully at school. And when that happens, we can forget obsessing about the 1984 film and enjoy this one. That was then; this is now.

The story once again involves a kid being packed up by his divorced mom and forced to leave his hometown and friends and move far away -- from Detroit to Beijing, this time. He hates it. Then a cute young violinist named Mei Ying (Han Wenwen) smiles at him, and life looks more promising -- if it weren't for the school bully, Cheng (Wang Zhenwei). This creature is so hateful and sadistic it's hard to explain, until we meet his brutal kung fu coach, Master Li (Rongguang Yu). The monstrous Li teaches a new form of child abuse: Kids beating up on each other.

The story proceeds, as it must, with Dre slowly softening the heart of Mr. Han, who saves him from a beating by Cheng and agrees to teach him the secrets of kung fu. Training goes well, and Dre and Mei Ying make a pact to attend each other's big days: his kung fu tournament, her recital. There's the usual nonsense about her parents disapproving of him. Gee, why in the world would the parents of a world-class classical musician disapprove of a kung fu student from Detroit who doesn't speak Chinese?

Luckily for Dre and the movie, everyone in China who needs to speak English can do so, even the little monster Cheng. Many Americans not only have small interest in learning another language, they have small interest in reading subtitles of their own. We believe, as Mark Twain put it in "The Innocents Abroad," that any foreigner can speak English if it is only spoken slowly enough and loudly enough.

It goes without saying that the whole film leads up to a climactic kung fu tournament, and that Dre is pitted against Cheng for the championship. The lineage of the film is distinguished; the '84 version was directed by John Avildsen, director of "Rocky." This film's climax is unusually well-handled; the tension is constructed in a careful way, the characters are developed, and use of a scoreboard makes it seem orderly, not rushed. It's one of the better Obligatory Fight climaxes I've seen.

The director, Harald Zwart, has not been one of my favorites; he made last year's "The Pink Panther 2." But here, with a robust script by Christopher Murphey and cinematography by Roger Pratt (who filmed two Harry Potters), he makes a handsome, absorbing movie. It runs a little long, but during the championship, that's the last thing you're thinking of.


"THE KARATE KID"

Three and a half stars

Dre Parker ...... Jaden Smith

Mr. Han ......... Jackie Chan

Sherry Parker ... Taraji P. Henson

Mei Ying ........ Han Wenwen

Cheng ........... Wang Zhenwei

Master Li ....... Rongguang Yu

Columbia presents a film directed by Harald Zwart. Screenplay by Christopher Murphey. Running time: 131 minutes. MPAA rating: PG (for bullying, martial arts action violence and some mild language).

Film Review: The Karate Kid
Formulaic but savvy reboot of the four-film series makes for a solid children's movie, bolstered by exotic locales and a genuinely talented young star.
June 9, 2010
-By Frank Lovece

For movie details, please click here.
The simplistic but undeniably effective 1984 film The Karate Kid massaged the classic David-and-Goliath underdog theme with the outcast wish-fulfillment of any kid who's ever wanted to best a bully; not by coincidence was it directed by the Rocky-meister, John G. Avildsen. And like Rocky Balboa, the Karate Kid came back for round after round, culminating with a girl Karate Kid (Hilary Swank!) in the fourth and final film, The Next Karate Kid (1994).

While this reboot doesn't have the momentous cultural cachet of the Daniel Craig James Bond, it’s nonetheless a clever concoction: Boomer parents who liked the original 26 years ago can try to relive and share the experience with their kid, and making the hero an African-American from Detroit—a city that's a quintessential signifier of "Urban Black," with none of that buppie connotation—seems a smart move in trying to expand the audience.

Setting it in China, where 12-year-old Dre Parker (Will Smith's son, Jaden Smith) and his mom Sherry (Taraji P. Henson) relocate after she gets a job at a Chinese auto manufacturer, also makes sense, since in 21st-century America the kind of brutal bullying Dre faces at the hands of kung fu-trained schoolmate Cheng (newcomer Zhenwei Wang) would get the little thug, his parents and the look-the-other-way school officials into court faster than you could say "lawsuit." But apparently life is cheap is China, where in one scene a half-dozen little Beijing droogies beat Dre so severely that you'd reasonably expect him to suffer serious internal bleeding.

That's the scene, of course, where Jackie Chan, as a sullen maintenance man at the apartment house where the Parkers and other ex-pats live, comes to the rescue with his still-enjoyable razzmatazz of kung fu come-and-get-it, his choreography expertly nailing the line between defending himself against a bunch of tweens and not really hurting them. It's unfortunate he has to deliver such lines as "You see only with your eyes, so you are easy to fool" and "When fighting angry blind man, best to stay out of the way," which is either unforgivably bad or pandering screenwriting, take your pick.

Formulaic but not in a bad way, as Dre learns kung fu from Chan's Mr. Han in preparation for The Big Tournament, The Karate Kid hits all the children's-lit beats, from screaming anger at helplessly having to be somewhere because grownups say so, to painful acceptance and slow readjustment, to the spark of new adventure and first tentative stabs at self-determination. That all works here. And in terms of enticing visuals, it's hard to beat the dazzling panoramas of what for most Westerners remains an exotic land—particularly the stunning scenes at the Wudang Shan temples and monasteries, a roof-of-the-world so beautiful it makes you wonder why China can't just butt out of Tibet and leave them with their own.

But the most notable thing in this kids' film is the kid. It's easy to think, after he played a son opposite his real-life dad in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), plus a few things here and there, that Jaden Smith is simply riding on his movie-star dad's coattails. But the naturalness of his performance is an eye-opener. Showing none of the slightly forced mannerisms that understandably afflict most child actors, Smith seems at once in conscious control and emotionally spontaneous. He has a great, subtle way of showing the doubt beneath Dre's blustery bravado, and of seeming like a genuinely irritating 12-year-old and not a ham-fisted, obnoxious movie 12-year-old. That all helps when the film gets sentimental or, in the case of Dre's budding romance with Meiying (newcomer Wenwen Han), too cloyingly cute. Here's hoping the kid stays in the pictures.

[GeneChing]

With All Due Respect: Harald Zwart on Directing THE KARATE KID by Lori Ann White

[JamesC]

I'm still confused about how people are still confused on the title.

Seriously.

All you have to do is google the movie and it will tell you why it is called The Karate Kid.

[mooyingmantis]

Excellent movie! As good, if not better, than the original. The scenes of Wudang mountain were worth the price for me.
My wife and teenage son loved it.

Richard A. Tolson

[SanHeChuan]

Excellent movie! As good, if not better, than the original.

Agreed. People clapped at the end. That doesn't happen here.

[PHILBERT]

Excellent movie! As good, if not better, than the original. The scenes of Wudang mountain were worth the price for me.
My wife and teenage son loved it.

Richard A. Tolson

Agreed.

I didn't care for the movie personally, but I can see why someone else would. It comes off as a typical "Inspirational" feel good movie that so many of are out there, and it is pretty much an exact carbon copy of the original.

The only thing I liked about the movie was the fact it *was in China. I went with a friend and had to explain to her this particular scene, and that in the film they weren't doing Kung Fu, but rather just flashy Wushu.

Funny enough she wants to go to Taiji Legacy next weekend with me now!