The Karate Kid (2010)

[workinwifdakids]

Last night was family movie night, and we decided on The Karate Kid, the 2010 remake of the original (and its three follow-ons). The film is the latest in a series of "re-imaginings" of popular movies. However, this movie stayed away from the trap of "Michael Bay: Do It Again, Harder" that cause so many of these movies to fall flat. It also manages to successfully stay away from making the audience wholly dependent on having seen the first one to understand this one.

The main character is Dre Parker played by Jaden Smith, the real-life son of Will Smith (Bad Boys, Men in Black, Enemy of the State) and Jada Pinkett Smith (The Matrix trilogy and The Nutty Professor franchise). Dre is a young boy who accompanies his mother from Detroit to her new job in China after the unexplained death of his father. His growing pains and homesickness are exacerbated by his verbal torment and physical abuse by a group of bullies from the local Kung Fu training center. This is an emotionally-charged set of scenes, and yet another reason why this movie shines in its naked depiction of emotions. Playing cat-and-mouse games with bullies, being unable to tell an adult, helpless and hopeless. There wasn't any cliched scene in which the bully says, "I shall now make your life miserable." The scenes just showed his day-in, day-out existence of living in fear.

They could have had Dre's part be played as a caricature of an urban black child, but they didn't do that. They also didn't strip him of his Detroit culture, either. The balance was really well executed. There was only one small scene where he played up a precocious boy, but 99% of the movie they ignored that temptation. The rest of the movie is very much like that of the first Karate Kid from the '80s, in which the old man tutors the boy toward a competition fight in which only he or the cruel bully can prevail. For those who grew up on the Karate Kid franchise, there are some neat tributes to Pat Morita which, even then, aren't hammer-to-the-head obvious.

The soundtrack could have been MUCH better, though, and there was a problem with the lighting. The lighting was used masterfully, but a bit OVERdone, much like a director who has fallen in love with the slow-motion scene. And there is the problem of the movie "The Karate Kid" being entirely about Kung-Fu. It was really great, but it would be like having a re-make of "The Longest Yard" be about soccer.

Anyway, I give the movie a 9/10 for getting the audience emotionally involved, a 7/10 for soundtrack, a 9.5/10 in the "movie re-imagining" area, and an 8.5/10 overall.

One note for parents: The MPAA gave this a PG rating for martial arts violence and the use of the word "ass" as a humor element, but they missed the boat on this. The stark images of bullying, the raw portrayal of cruelty, and the adult themes of the sensei's emotional turmoil really make this a PG-13 movie. At times my wife and I were uncomfortable for our 3rd grader and 6th grader, but no so much that we stopped the movie.

[Kommander]

Yea the ratings system has really slipped recently. The line between R and PG-13 is getting so blurry it can be hard to tell the difference.