This movie is more of an update from the original. Jaden Smith is the 12 year old Dre Parker not someone who's in their late teens who wants to learn karate. Jaden's character was more outspoken and less curious than Daniel Larusso played by Ralph Macchio more than a quarter of a century ago. Jackie Chan plays Mr. Han another version of Mr. Miyagi. Producers did an excellent job of making Chan appear more older and somber. There was excellent acting on his part where Chan is usually in the realm of a comical action hero. A few parts in the movie I feel were rush together where Dre played by Jaden almost instantly form a bond with the little Chinese girl. Also when the bully Cheng starts to bully Dre when he starts talking to the girl. From that point the movie became fairly predictable. Not to say I haven't enjoyed watching the different backgrounds of China and Dre learning to fit in where ever he can. The difference between the first karate kid from 1984 and now is a pre-teen is the star instead of an 18 year old and the training scenes in this one was too repetitive. In the first one the training scenes are iconic like wax-on was-off and the one with the paint brush. This movie has only one similar training method which was the jacket-on jacket-off and that has gotten to be tiring. Besides the point of using a African-American kid(Jaden) as the star his character was comical but yet naive. The karate kid in closing was one of the best remakes to date and it explores the culture of China and a kid training to build up enough courage to face his fears.
Review of The Karate Kid
