Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
6/19/10
Like most things in life,
acting careers tend to follow a bell curve. One starts as a supporting
player, hopes to graduate to leading roles, and eventually puts their skills
to work in those most challenging supporting roles reserved for the veteran
Character Actor. The Karate Kid, a remake of the 1984 sports
classic that briefly made Ralph Macchio a star and got veteran comedian
Pat Morita an Oscar nomination, is most interesting as a snapshot of two
actors trying to transition from one stage to another. Jaden Smith,
the son of one of our biggest movie stars, tries to build on solid supporting
work in The Day the Earth Stood Still
and especially The Pursuit of Happyness
in his first lead role, while legendary martial arts star Jackie Chan tries
to show previously untapped dramatic chops in the Character Actor role
of his mentor. Both men are works in progress, and will hopefully
improve in future films, but their performances do nothing to buoy an already
slipshod production that retrofits a great story for mediocrity at every
turn. The Karate Kid is long, dull, and filled with below-par
acting. It has its moments near the end, but there's really nothing
here you won't see better if you Netflix the original.
Sherry Parker (Taraji P.
Henson) uproots her son from their Detroit home to take a great new job
in China. For little Dre (Jaden Smith), it means starting over in
a country where he doesn't speak the language, has no friends and is relentlessly
bullied by a gang of kung-fu toughs led by Cheng (Zhenwei Wang, his face
twisted into a delightfully perpetual bug-eyed scowl). Unable to
stand by and watch, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), the maintenance man in the building
where the Parkers live, steps in and uses his Kung Fu skills to drive off
Dre's attackers. On Han's encouragement, the two of them head for
the school where the sadistic Master Li (Rongguang Yu) teaches Cheng and
his friends to show no mercy to their enemies. Not only does the
evil Master refuse to mend his students' ways, he challenges Han that they
may not leave unless one of them fights. So, he agrees that Dre will
fight-at an upcoming kung-fu tournament for which Han will train him.
And so the process begins, as Han uses repetitive motion to train Dre's
body and lessons on the true meaning of Kung Fu to focus his mind.
But can anything make him ready to face the gauntlet of experienced Kung
Fu kids who await him at the big tournament?
Nothing speaks louder about
the job Christopher Murphey has done updating the original Kid script
by Robert Mark Kamen (who gets story credit here as the WGA continues to
change their rules on crediting the original writer's role pretty much
every time a new remake comes along) than a moment early on when the film
can no longer deny the elephant in the room. See, Karate is a Japanese
discipline, and this remake's characters all practice Kung Fu. So,
how to reconcile the issue while keeping the marketable remake title?
Simple: Sherry says “Karate, Kung Fu, what's the difference?” and
we will speak of it no more. Such is the generally indifferent attitude
the film has to all the matters that should actually concern it.
Mother and Son never really hash out the issues caused by her decision
to move the family to China and nothing substantial is made of cultural
differences Dre doesn't so much overcome as disregard (the film often plays
like an Infomercial for China, but isn't willing to have its characters
learn anything from or teach anything to the World's Creditor). The
filmmakers have decided to stage the original's most memorable moments
in general while swapping out the details, and in each case the new can't
measure up to the old (no new “Wax on/Wax off” catchphrases will be born
here).
Some things do work.
The relationship between Dre and aspiring violinist Mei Ying (Wen Wen Han)
is sweet, even if it eats up more screen time than it might deserve, and
while it doesn't measure up to its predecessor, the climactic tournament
does generate a few thrills. And then there's The Scene, Mr. Han's
big moment where Chan is called upon to deliver a tearful monologue that
may require more acting chops than every previous scene he's ever played
put together. He's really great, and you can feel the movie stop
and really care about this scene that clearly matters so much to the star.
Everything about it, right down to the music and cinematography, is better
and more focused than all that surrounds it. In some ways, it only
calls more attention to the indifference with which Harald Zwart (veteran
director of movies like The Pink Panther 2
and Agent Cody Banks that need to come in on budget more than they
need to be good) stages the proceedings.
From the ashes of a movie
that goes on far too long (two hours and twenty minutes to be precise),
we're left to ponder the progress of the Smith-as-leading-man and Chan-as-character-actor
experiments. As I mentioned previously, I really liked Smith in his
two earlier films, and one particular scene in Happyness where he
throws a heartbreaking tantrum in denial of his homelessness, showed real
dramatic oomph. But he doesn't have a smooth transition to the lead
here, showing strengths and weaknesses very similar to the ones his father
had in early films like Independence Day and Men in Black:
the kid's got amazing ease on-camera for his age and shows a lot of charm
and flair. But when he's not speaking, his face tends to blank out,
like Dre's nothing but the sum total of his lines. And the emotional
high notes elude him: I never once got the sense that this kid lives
in fear of his attackers, making the bullying part of the story totally
fail to resonate. I hate to be too tough on a kid, so I'll just mention
that as much as I love ID4, I'd have NEVER imagined that the Will
Smith who helped upload that alien virus would mature into the first-rate
dramatic actor who shared the screen with his son in Happyness,
and his improvement over time provides a first-rate blueprint for the kid
to follow.
So too will Chan have to
work on being in the moment at all times. As I mentioned previously,
his Big Scene is a barn-burner, and makes me really interested to see him
tackle a role full of such challenges. But, truth be told, the Character
Actor often has to make his own fun, something Morita did so well in the
original Kid. But Mr. Han isn't particularly engaging most of the
time because Chan does nothing to make the character sing. For a
man whose balletic grace and innovative choreography drew rightful comparisons
to the great silent comedians over the years, his Kung Fu Master is awfully
stationary and banal when he's not hitting the high notes. These
are the last two performances we needed in a movie so aggressively overlong.
Of course, Oscar nominee Henson is actually worse than either of them,
not hitting a single identifiable note in a thankless role that seems to
exist exclusively so we know why an American kid is in China. Among
the rest of the cast only Yu stands out, knowing how to milk his ridiculously
diabolical role for Snidely Wiplash fun. The script has kinda miscalculated
the effect of making all the kids younger on this part, as a guy teaching
a bunch of teens to be ruthless bullies is a lot more macho than one seemingly
masterminding a conspiracy to have an army of evil tykes pound on a single
kid. He must have a hell of a lot of lunch money...
The Karate Kid will
play better for you the less you're familiar with the original and the
more willing you are to accept any old inspirational sports movie (I say
that not as an insult, as there are plenty of genres where I'm similarly
afflicted, just not this one). Die hard Jackie Chan fans might be
interested to get a head start on the next stage of their hero's career,
and the cult of Will Smith might feel a certain pride in seeing his kid
try to follow in the Old Man's footsteps. But if you do not fit into
any of these groups, you'll be in for a long, hard slog through a pretty
second-rate remake. If you're reading this, it's still not too late
to choose the 1984 Netflix option instead. I see it's even available
to watch instantly on their website... |
