To my great surprise, yes. Upon first hearing about and then viewing the trailer I was determined to hate it. Foremost, there's no bloody karate. Why call a film the 'Karate' kid when it's set in China and the martial art of choice is Kung-Fu? I'm a little bit anal about such things to the point where it is totally conceivable that it may ruin an entire premise for me. I'm also usually rather abhorrent to remakes of anything. You'll often find me amongst the hysteric chorus' of "stop blaspheming my childhood!", but I've come to realise that not all remakes are utterly shit. I reckon what gets me most is when a current generation only knows of the most recent version, never of the original. Why I care I don't know, but I digress. Onward!
In this reincarnation Jackie Chan plays maintenance man Mr. Han, taking on the role of sensei, or whatever the Kung-Fu equivalent is. Jaden Smith plays the far-more-petulant-than-I-remember-the-original-being 'Karate' kid, Dre, dragged to Beijing by his mother's job. Staying true to the original, Dre develops a crush on the 'wrong' girl, Meiying (played by Wenwen Han), where in this version the bully is played by an overprotective family friend rather than ex-boyfriend. I was a little incredulous by the whole 'love' thread going on given that the kids are played by 11 year olds, not adolescent teens as in the original. There was a moment where the young lady who takes Dre's fancy dances pretty provocatively for a child, which I was a bit weirded out by. Other than that it's all very innocent and never develops beyond anything more than friendship, thankfully.
The sequence of events is more or less in line with the original. Dre falls foul of the bully's gang only for Mr Han to take pity on the young outcast. In perhaps the most amusing scene of the film Dre is cornered, taking a pummelling from the gang when Mr Han suddenly jumps into the fray and takes on numerous Kung-Fu children. After Mr Han tries to reason with the bully's evil Kung-Fu school, he inadvertently enters young Dre into a local tournament. Mr Han takes it upon himself to train Dre to a sufficient standard through a series of seemingly meaningless tasks. Unfortunately, unlike the original, these were not nearly as humorous as 'a-washin'-tha-car' and 'wax on, wax off'.
What I found most fascinating were the small glimpses of what China is like. It is high on my list of places to visit so seeing a little bit of city life in Beijing was most interesting. The film also managed to work in some stunning shots of the Chinese landscape and countryside which was highly welcome, even though their tenuous links to the story itself were wholly unnecessary. It was merely an excuse to showcase some of China's most famous landmarks for the sake of it, but it wasn't unappreciated.
In the end director Harold Zwart does an adequate job. This was not the terrible film I was expecting. I actually found it secretly enjoyable, but by no means is it as good as the original. Jaden Smith isn't great in and at times he's somewhat irritating. Given time however, and I'm sure if his Dad has passed on any of his talent, we'll see him mature into a much better actor. Admittedly it does take a while to warm to the characters as it's easy to remain sceptical for at least the opening forty-five minutes, but once you settle in you begin to appreciate a number of cute moments which give you a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling inside. Jackie Chan is the stand out here as the solemn and wildly different Mr Miyagi. What's most important is that this version doesn't defecate over the originals' memory. For the new generation who've never seen the 1984 version and are unaware of the plot they will definitely enjoy the new take. For those of us brought up on the original this will never be as good, but if you are able to detach the two from each other and try not to inevitably compare them, this is still a cute, feel-good and relatively pleasing effort.
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