On the couch

There’s a lot annoying about The Karate Kid the recent Will Smith produced remake of the 80s teen classic that he essentially bought as a star vehicle for his son.

To start with – that’s annoying. What sort of a spolit brat gets their dad to raid the larder of beloved 80s classics to give them a starring role?
The sin is compounded by the fact that Smith the Younger doesn’t even have the common courtesy to be a talentless, snot-nosed oik worthy of such unreasonable and unfounded irritation.
Instead, the little blighter is thoroughly watchable. The charismatic little creep challenges his father’s Fresh Prince cockiness and throws in just enough surly pre-teen to make the character of Dre a far more believable creation than Ralph Macchio’s Daniel-san.
If that seems petty than the next source of irritation will come across as pettier than a 15-handed child in the world famous San Diego rabbit, kitten and puppy petting zoo. Despite the film’s name, the martial art at its centre is kung fu, not karate. Karate is Japanese and the new flick is set in China. It’s the equivalent of calling a film about a kid who plays rugby, The Soccer Kid.
So, as advertised, a petty, petty irritation.
The McGuffin that sets The Karate Kid in motion is young Dre (Smith) and his mother (Taraji P Henson) relocating from Detroit to Beijing.
Not delighted with the move to start with, his situation worsens when a bunch of mean kids with serious ass-kicking skills, led by the pleasingly dislikable Zhenwei Wang, decide to pick on the new kid.
Worse still, the kids go to the same school as him and so his efforts to woo one of his classmates routinely end in him getting lumps kicked off him.
Fate intervenes, however, when he’s saved from a particularly brutal beating by the maintenance man for his building, Mr Han (Jackie Chan). From this meeting it’s only a short hop, skip and jump kick to the face before Dre is signed up to fight the bullies in a kung fu tournament and taken under Mr Han’s wing for a couple of training montages and the imparting of some fatherly advice and Eastern wisdom.
So, geography aside, it’s exactly the same as the original flick except the cast and scale are considerably better and broader.
While much of the film is an average, at best, fish out of water affair, the development of the relationship between Smith and Chan is a pleasure to behold.
Unlike Pat Morita (Mr Miyagi in the original flick), Jackie Chan is a supremely accomplished martial artist and his years of both training and teaching experience add a layer of believability to the pair’s various training scenes.
The Hong Kong action legend also plays against his normally clownish persona as the emotionally fragile Mr Han and even after the brilliance of “jacket on, jacket off” school of training is revealed, the relationship between the two remains spiky and interesting.
Smith himself is believable as a sullen teen. He isn’t likable in every scene and this edge helps make the character all the more enjoyable in the end.
The comic moment – while few and far between – are clever and enjoyable, especially a reference to the original movie in Mr Han’s introductory scene. Chan is a funny man who’s been refining his Buster Keaton-style physical humour for nearly 50 years and he plays well off the young Smith.
His shining moment is, however, the scene where he takes on the gang of bullies intent on making an omelette out of Dre’s nose. It is a brief reminder of why he is beloved of action and stunt fans the world over.
The only other obvious irritation in the film is Dre’s mother who is played like a cartoonish stereotype by Taraji P Henson. While the film’s scrpt may not be Chekov, every single line of the mother’s dialogue both in writing and delivery is mawkish and annoying.
Fortunately, she gets little screen time but manages to ruin virtually every scene she appears in – disappointing given Henson’s previous roles in Hustle&Flow and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button show her to be a talented actress.
Make no mistake, this isn’t going to win Oscars, but for a film that could’ve been a sloppy cash-in, the new Karate Kid has an obvious level of thought and commitment that makes it superior to its predecessor in every way.