Karate Kid: Legends. A Review (Review #1980)

KARATE KID: LEGENDS

I have in the past expressed puzzlement over how Ghostbusters became a franchise, with various film and animated series spinning from the first film. I now turn to another beloved 1980's film that also created its own universe. Karate Kid: Legends is the newest entry into an unexpected franchise of four previous films and a television series. Curiously, I saw both the first Ghostbusters and The Karate Kid when theaters reopened after the forced COVID shutdowns. I was surprised at how long both films were. Yet I digress. Pleasant enough, harmless enough, Karate Kid: Legends pretty much coasts on said legends.

Li Fong (Ben Wang) moves from Beijing to New York City due to his mother (Ming-Na Wen) taking a new job as a doctor there. She also wants to move Li away from her uncle Han (Jackie Chan), who has been training his great-nephew in kung fu. While Dr. Fong does love Han, she blames in part for the death of her other son, killed in a stabbing after a kung fu tournament by the person he defeated. For his part, Li is still deeply traumatized by his inaction during the stabbing but still yearns to learn kung fu.

It takes approximately less than a week for Li to meet pretty Mia Lipani (Sadie Stanley) and gain a bitter enemy in Conor Day (Aramis Knight). Conor is the five-borough champion in kung fu. He is also tied to loan sharks who are putting the squeeze on Mia's father, retired boxer turned pizza restauranteur Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson). Victor has decided that only a comeback to the ring will help get him enough money to pay off the loan sharks and maybe have some left over for Mia's education.

As Mia and Li begin a slow dance of romance, Li finds it difficult given that Mia and Conor have had a bad romance in the past. In exchange for teaching her Mandarin, she shows Li New York. For her part, Dr. Fong hires Alan Fetterman (Wyatt Oleff) to tutor Li on his math, and he becomes an unofficial friend and love advisor. 

Things come to a head when Victor's near comeback is thwarted by sucker punches that leave him close to death. The trauma of Li's brother's death returns, along with the guilt and anger from Mia. Also returning? Han, who has come to train him. Han, however, is not alone, for he eventually talks Han's late friend Miyagi's favorite and best student to help him. With that, Li trains with both Han and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). Will their training help Li defeat Conor and save Victory Pizza? Will Li find redemption and romance? Will Daniel delight in New York pizza with his frenemy Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka)?

The most that I can in favor of Karate Kid: Legends is that children, mostly if not totally unfamiliar with what came before, will like it. A couple of them cheered and applauded at the conclusion of the Li/Conor match on a New York City rooftop. Perhaps I can be positive also in noting that Rob Lieber's screenplay managed to integrate Han from the 2010 Karate Kid reboot/Jaden Smith vanity project into the overall Karate Kid mythos. It might even merit extra points in how Karate Kid: Legends did not include Jaden Smith at all.

I would be remiss if I did not complement some of the cast. Of particular note are Wang and Stanley as Li and Mia. Individually and together, Wang and Stanley did well in the film. Wang was charming when playing romantic with Stanley, a mix of innocent and almost arrogant goofiness. He handled the action scenes well too. Stanley, who to me looks like a younger Jennifer Lawrence, did not lean heavily into a Nuw Yawk accent, which was a plus. She too was charming as Mia, mostly balancing a sensible girl with someone who was aware of her own mistakes.

That is not to say that Wang and Stanley did not stumble at times. When attempting to play dramatic, both of them looked a bit exaggerated. However, that is not a dealbreaker in the overall positive performances that they gave.

What is harder to accept are both the adults and the overall story. While watching Karate Kid: Legends, I began to wonder who Victor Lipani was. He looked and sounded familiar, even with a bizarre New York accent that seemed very forced and unnatural. It took a while, but I finally realized that it was Pacey from Dawson's Creek. It is unfair to think that given that Joshua Jackson has had a solid career post-Dawson. It is not his fault that I can only remember him from a teen soap from over twenty years ago. What is his fault is the exaggerated tones of Victor's speaking. He was not convincing as this Brooklyn/Bronx boxer.

It also does not help that Karate Kid: Legends seems almost a bit of a Karate Kid remake with Li as Mr. Miyagi and Victor as Daniel-san. Long stretches of a surprisingly short film are taken up by Li training Victor to get him into shape for his comeback. Try as the film might, we are not invested in Victor's story because we should be invested in Li's story. 

Add to that how in other ways, Karate Kid: Legends still plays like a greatest hits album from a cover band. Conor is nothing more than a combination Johnny Lawrence pre-Cobra Kai and Terry Silver from The Karate Kid: Part III. I cannot say anything about Aramis Knight's acting ability because there was no character in Conor Day. He was EVIL from the first shot, and his efforts to be brutal at times veered towards comical. In some ways, it must have been the easiest money Knight could have made. His performance consisted of nothing more than posing and making faces, an antagonist needed because the film needed one.

I find that Karate Kid: Legends barely ties into the overall Karate Kid universe. Daniel LaRusso could easily have been written out without affecting any part of the film. Moreover, the way he gets involved is by a very thin thread. Why he opts to go to New York after saying that he wouldn't the film never answers. I know that Han is supposed to be Mr. Miyagi's good friend, but is that enough for Daniel to fly out and train some kid he does not know? Macchio is just there for nostalgia bait. 

Chan did better as Han, having some moments of drama and humor. I cannot say comedy, for the times that Karate Kid: Legends tried for laughs they fell flat for me. A training scene where Daniel and Han are debating their methods while causing Li to continuously fall was meant to be funny. It felt forced.

All that and more can be blamed on director Jonathan Entwistle. He was enamored of split-screen montages set to pop music. There were endless such scenes. By trying to be a bit flashy with the look, Entwistle only succeeded in drawing attention away from whatever heart Karate Kid: Legends was aiming for and more about how clever things can be. Having a video game ping sound whenever points are scored at the five-borough tournament is a little cringey. 

Finally, I think that while Macchio could have been removed without affecting the film, minimizing Ming-Na Wen's role to almost nothing should be thought of as the greater sin. 

Karate Kid: Legends is well-intentioned and harmless enough. It does have some funny bits (Mia calling Li "the Chinese Peter Parker" and a running gag about Li ordering "stuffed crust" from the pizza puritan Victor are pleasant). However, it is not as good as it could have been. Karate Kid: Legends fails to live up to its title.

DECISION: C-

The Karate Kid (2010): A Review (Review #95)

THE KARATE KID (2010)

*Author's Note: It's the policy of Rick's Cafe Texan NOT to take into consideration the original when reviewing a remake/reboot/reimagining of a film. Therefore, all efforts will be made to ignore the existence of the 1984 The Karate Kid in this review.

Not Well Done, Grasshopper...

Quick lesson: the correct pronunciation for the particular martial art known as karate is "kaw-raw-teh" and translated from the Japanese it means "empty hand" (kara-te). You see the same when you see karaoke, which should be pronounced "kaw-raw-OKEH" (empty orchestra, kara-oke). This information really is useless when you think of The Karate Kid, because A.) it's not karate, and B.) it's not based on anything Japanese.

Instead, it is about kung-fu, and it is thoroughly Chinese. This begs the question, if it's not about karate but about kung-fu, why not call it as it should be called: The Kung-Fu Kid? Answer is obvious: The Karate Kid is already understood by audiences, and frankly, only practitioners of karate, kung-fu, and nitpickers like myself would bother to note or care about the difference. Alas, for many in the audience...karate, kung-fu, same difference.

Twelve-year-old Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) moves from Detroit to Beijing to accompany his mother (Taraji P. Henson) who has been transferred to a new job there. First day he's there two things happen: Dre meets Mei Ying (Wenwen Han) a pretty Chinese violinist, and Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), a bully with a gang who doesn't take kindly to this foreigner taking a liking to Mei Ying.

Dre is miserable in China: he doesn't speak the language (or ever bother to try and learn it), keeps getting pushed around by Cheng and his crew, has no friends, and just really hates it there. He does try to push back at Cheng & Company but has little success since they all practice kung-fu. In one fight, Dre comes close to apparently almost being killed but then none other than the maintenance man at Dre's apartment, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) shows up, and we find he is a kung-fu master. Han strikes a bargain with Master Li (Rongguan Yu), the head instructor at the kung-fu academy Cheng & Company go to: Dre will not be bothered while Han trains Dre in the art of kung-fu and in return Dre will fight in the Kung-Fu tournament. Han trains Dre, we discover a secret from Mr. Han's past, and then we get the epic duel between Dre and Cheng.

In a film like The Karate Kid, it's vital to be able to root and cheer and identify with the lead. That can't be done. Jaden Smith WILL BE A STAR...whether we want him to be one or not.

Agreed: he was wonderful in The Pursuit of Happyness, but does anyone think the same of his performance in the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still? (Maybe he just shouldn't be in remakes). Throughout the film he came off as frankly a bit of a jerk: dropping his jacket on the floor and always whining whenever his mother asked him to put it up, talking back to her, disinterested in learning even the most rudimentary Mandarin and expecting everyone else to speak English, and even being almost bored when visiting The Forbidden City.

Side note: if he's not impressed with The Forbidden City even in the slightest, then he's beyond hope.

Dre in short came off as the quintessential Ugly American, making it hard for me to like him, let alone cheer him on. All that could be tolerated, but Smith at this point seems incapable of expressing any emotion beyond whining and slight boredom. At the moment, young Smith has not learned the difference between emoting and acting. It's more than just saying the lines written by Christopher Murphey. When he is suppose to be angry, he gestures with his hands but doesn't communicate anger so much as irritation.

I'm going to digress on the age-appropriateness of The Karate Kid. As stated, Dre is twelve years old. I wonder whether it's right to give a twelve-year-old a big romance with another twelve-year-old. At a festival (which, unfortunately given the accents I first heard "festival" as "basketball") Dre and Mei finally share a kiss. I see nothing wrong in tweens expressing attraction via lips touching, but as filmed by Harald Zwart it was extremely lush and romantic for a scene involving children...it even had literal sparks going off a la To Catch A Thief.

Even more disconcerting are the number of shots where young Smith is filmed shirtless while training. All the accompanying "woos" by girls was irritating in and of itself, but what seemed to be an effort to make young Smith some sort of preteen sex symbol was downright creepy.

I have already remarked at making a-then seventeen year old boy the object of lust, but doing likewise to a twelve-year-old was simply flat-out weird. Maybe twelve-year-olds express their sexual desires more readily today than when I was twelve, but the focus on young Smith's physical training was off-putting to me. All this might work for a seventeen year old, but for a twelve year old, not so much.

Leaving that aside for the moment, let's go back to other performances. Henson didn't add much to the film since she wasn't in the film that much. Basically, she served as a reason to get Dre to China, and the same goes for the little boy who got Dre to go to the park. His purpose was to get the ball rolling on the main plot, and once that happens we don't see him again until the big tournament.

Side note: he was there so briefly I don't think I even learned the character's name.

It's an odd thing to be wondering where a minor character went in a film, but it's a sign of the problems of The Karate Kid that characters can be disposed so easily and quickly once they have served their raison d'ete. In fact, when one thinks about it, the story didn't even have to move Sherry and Dre Parker to China...couldn't he have found one bully in Detroit? I heard there were some bullies in West Philadelphia, just saying.

There really was no reason to set the film in China, save for the fact that kung-fu is more prevalent there than in the States, and that Beijing is located there, as is The Great Wall (where Dre has more training, something I'm sure goes on there every day), and the Chinese market is becoming very lucrative.

Chan, as the mysterious Mr. Han, does a much better job at being the wise mentor to Dre, and the scene where his secret is revealed (all great men have torturous secrets in films) shows he can be a strong dramatic actor.

Besides Chan, there really isn't much to recommend The Karate Kid apart from some beautiful cinematography of China by Roger Pratt. For all the lush imagery of the Chinese countryside (better cinematography of The Forbidden City can be found in The Last Emperor courtesy of Vittorio Storaro) the camera work and editing of Joel Negron is among the ugliest in recent memory. There seemed to be a deliberate effort to copy the style of a Bourne film in the way the fight scenes were filmed, so much so that I thought the film might have been retitled The Bourne Elementary School.

The fight scenes were confusing and badly shot: whatever beauty there is in kung-fu was lost with the camera going this way and that, left, right, center, all over the place. Even when there were no fights, the camera had a habit of moving all around: Dre would be seen on a couch, then the camera would move to the door where Sherry walks in, then move to the jacket on the floor, then back to Dre on the couch, then again to the jacket, then to Sherry and move with Sherry picking up the jacket off the floor--one was in danger of getting whiplash.

For all the money put in the film (courtesy of a co-production with the China Film Company, which I figure is the state-run film company, and co-producers Will and Jada Smith, who just happen to be Jaden's father and mother), this is really a cheap way of making a film.

One last point: James Horner's score seemed to me to echo music from other composers. When Dre first encounters the kung-fu academy, I thought it was reminiscent of Debussy, while when he goes to a temple for more training I heard elements of Gladiator, which is curious since in that film Hans Zimmer's score had echoes of Gustav Holst's Mars, The Bringer of War.

As stated, I make it a rule not to discuss the original version of a film when discussing a remake/reboot/reimagined version, but The Karate Kid was almost goading me to do so. At the climatic match between Cheng and Dre, Master Li tells him, "I want you to break his leg. No mercy".

Forgive me, but I couldn't avoid hearing, "Sweep the leg" when I heard that.

The Karate Kid is clearly a star vehicle for the scion of a major star. It has no other purpose. Young Smith even contributes to the soundtrack: the last song has him performing with Sign of the End of Western Civilization Justin Bieber.

Young Smith may yet be an actual actor, but at the moment he still has to grow, get stronger directors and material to do so. I am interested if they decide to make a sequel, if only to hear these kids do their version of that old 1970s hit by Carl Douglas that goes, "Everybody was karate fighting..."

DECISION: D-