Over the weekend, I pulled off a bit of a double header and saw two movies in one night. Yeah, yeah, I know what you must be thinking. With today’s ticket prices, how do two totally unaccomplished movie critics with zero fan-base afford tickets to two movies? Well, I’ve got three words for you: bloodmobile. Ah yes, there’s nothing quite like that warm, satisfying feeling you get when you do something as noble as donate a pint of blood for a free movie ticket.
The two movies I saw were A-Team and The Karate Kid. Hands down, the better of the two movies was Karate Kid. Granted, we’re talking about two completely different types of movies here, so deciding which one you’d rather go to is more or less a matter of what you’re in the mood to see, whether it’s the nonsensical action of A-Team, or the touchy-feely underdog story of The Karate Kid. Or if there’s a bloodmobile parked in front of the theater, you can always do what I did and see both. Not to mention, you don’t have to buy your own snacks because they give you a candy bar if you feel dizzy. Or in my case, a free voucher for soda and popcorn if you fall completely to the floor and feign a seizure. Or claim that the nurse tripped you. I went with both.
What I don’t understand though, is why they would make a movie about a kid (Jaden Smith) who moves to China and masters the art of kung fu, and call it “The Karate Kid”. I understand the fact that the kid’s mother may be too big a moron to know the difference, since she basically says as much in the movie, but just because her character is the same idiot that transfers to China because she can’t keep work in Detroit (without ever having thought that maybe it was just time to leave Detroit, not the entire United States of America) that doesn’t mean everyone else is in America is that dumb.
One of the things I appreciated most about the original was that being Japanese, Mr. Miagi (Pat Morita) had a terribly sad back story, which was that while he was off serving the United States in the Armed Forces during World War II, fighting against his native Japan in the Pacific, his wife and child back home in America died in an internment camp. The story of Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) is by no means less tragic than that of Mr. Miagi‘s, but was it the best story a team of writers could have come up with to tug at the old heartstrings? I‘m not inclined to think so, no.
Another problem I think is that this new Karate Kid contains just as many things we’ll be too embarrassed to watch in twenty five years as the original Karate Kid has when we watch it now. For instance, when we see Ralph Maccio eyeball a girl to the guitar strum of some corny 80’s ballad, it’s no different than how we’ll feel when we look back on Jaden Smith with all his cornrows, eyeballing a girl to the beat of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face“. This movie is just as horribly dated as the original, and I wouldn’t rule out another remake in the future, only this time the kid will learn Capoeira, the art of Brazilian dance-fighting. And it will be called… The Karate Kid.
But if there was one thing that nearly caused me to throw a complete temper tantrum in the lobby and demand that the manager of the theater return my pint of blood to me, it was the ending of the movie, which I thought was grossly over the top. But alas, I did no such thing, because in the end The Karate Kid was still good (that, and the bloodmobile had already left) and lots of fun to see in a sold out theater, especially when the tournament was taking place. This is the part of the movie when there’s a cheering crowd on screen, which is deafening enough, but not as deafening as the lady seated behind me who threw her arms up in the air and screamed like she was cheering for her own kid. Not to mention that Jackie Chan does such a good a job acting, I dare say this may be one of his best movies. Which is a far cry from his absolute worst, The Spy Next Door. Then again, I think if there were a video of Jackie Chan squatting on a toilet taking a screamer, that would still be an infinitely better movie than The Spy Next Door. There might even be a sequel sooner.
That said, if I absolutely had to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down, I’d say The Karate Kid easily deserves a B+.