The Karate Kid (2010) Review

First and foremost I believe they should have changed title to "The Kung-fu Kid". In the movie there is a quote, "It's not Karate, mom, it's Kung Fu!"

?

What was the name of this movie again? "The Karate Kid"

I thought so, so what martial art is the kid learning and using in this movie? "Kung Fu"

Confused? Well don't be, because the next line after from mom is, "Karate, Kung Fu, whatever..."

Thank you Hollywood for making Americans look even dumber and more disrespectful to the martial arts than we are already perceived to be.

Okay so that's really my only rant as far this not being a really good movie.

To me, the original "Karate Kid" was a movie that will always hold a special place inside my heart. So in order to do a proper review of 2010's version, I will be making several comparsions. The first major notable difference is that this movie is taking place in China, the auto factory mom was working at, has moved there, if you're not paying attention, you miss that, as they don't really hit on that aspect of the movie very much, which I was kind of glad of because that meant we were getting down to business. One major difference is age between Dre (2010) and Daniel-san (1984)Also another high point that was hit upon was the fact that Jackie Chan, huge multi-billion dollar box office mega-star was going to be taking on the "Mr. Miyagi" role as "Mr. Han"... a handy man of the apartment building the kid and mom are staying at.

Right off the bat, the kid, Dre, starts hitting it off with locals, both figuratively with the "love" intrest, Mei Ying and the local bullies lead specifically by Cheng. The bulllies don't leave him alone, and you really get the sense of how kids that are bullied in school, for real, feel, as Dre tries his best to avoid them, and yet they are around every corner. In the last bully session, Mr. Han shows up to defend our weak lead star and kicks a bunch 12 year old's butts... funny, yet a bit striking at the same time, now you can tell Mr. Han is holding back from actually knocking them around, as he could have easily broke bones and pulverized these kids, but once this fight is over, you can tell Mr. Han was a bit winded so it could've got both ways, right?

Anyway, as I said earlier, the "Karate Kid" formula is there: A handyman/martial arts master agrees to teach a bullied boy karate (kung fu, whatever) and shows him that there is more to the martial art than fighting. With Mr. Han reluctantly willing to train our young hero, and again its in a slightly different style than the normal classroom setting, involving Dre putting his jacket on, taking it off, putting it on the ground, picking it up and hanging it on a peg. Much like Mr. Miyagi had Daniel-san waxing his car and painting his fence. Mr. Han shows Dre the China countryside, which almost feels like a tourist guide trying to show off and get more tourism in China, but if you're filming in China you might as well make the most of it and they did. So finally we get to the tournament, which is really Hollywood-ized, meaning there tons of lights, sound, music, big screens showing who's moving up in the tournament. Which is fine, movies are escapism and I'd rather they not touch on reality that much, which speaking of that, Jackie Chan does some fine acting in this movie, normally his zany, goofy, energy filled self doesn't ever really have time to act, and most of the time his characters are all pretty much the same, not so much the case in this movie. I was impressed.

Anywho, it still gave me the same butterfly, excited feeling to see our hero Dre take on the main bully, Cheng, that antognized him through a good portion of the first half of the movie. Dre is even hurt much the same way as Daniel-san, causing him to hobble and limp around, and Mr. Han even has a similar ancient Chinese healing technique to get him back into the fight.

So my finally score would be a 7.5 stars our of 10. There were some other things that kept it from reaching that 9/10 stars mark, but again I was not disappointed, I got out of it what I expected and some things I didn't expect. Not horrible, not mind-blowingly good either...