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Title: The Karate Kid
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, like the original there are scenes of violence and some mild language More kid friendly then the original though. Recommended for ages 8 and up. |
I don’t understand why it’s so fundamentally hard to make a good remake. I mean, seriously, do film makers just not know how to make movies anymore? If you have an original classic that still works for today’s audiences why do modern day versions of the same stories fail so miserably? Well now we have “The Karate Kid” a remake of Academy Award-winning director John G. Avildsen’s underdog classic. The original starred Ralph Macchio as the title character and Pat Morita as the wise Mr. Miyagi. This remake stars Jaden Smith as Dre. Parker and Jackie Chan as Mr. Han.
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Like the original the film begins with Dre’s mom uprooting them from their old house and moving to a new town. This remake takes it a step further though by moving the characters to China. The last movie was content to throw a new living arrangement at the character. The remake throws Dre this as well as a new country, culture, and way of living in general. Here Dre falls in love with a cute Chinese girl but her ex-boyfriend doesn’t like the new kid and makes it his goal to bully the kid. So Dre gets beat up on a daily basis until the wise Mr. Han takes pity on the kid and decides to train him in art of kung fu.
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Kung fu? I thought this was “The Karate Kid?” How can I enjoy a movie when even the title seems to get it wrong? Oh well, this is a minor quibble. Truth be told the movie is a pretty faithful remake of the original film, remaking many of the classic scenes to mirror more current times. And the movie itself...it’s pretty good too. Though the movie runs at two and a half hours the film is rarely boring and normally very uplifting. Like the original it even got me to stand up and cheer in the theater. That hasn’t happened for me since “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Miracle.”
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Though the movie is entertaining on it’s own level and that’s enough to recommend it, I also want to comment that this is one of the few summer blockbusters in recent memory that was made by an American company but features a largely non-white cast. What’s more the characters are people and not stereotypes and nothing is mentioned in the film itself that the characters aren’t white. Dre may be a young black kid but acts just like any other kid I know and talks without slang or stereotypical catchphrases. Same thing with Mr. Han. This, I think, is a true movie of progress. Strangely enough, it has little to say on these matters and succeeds largely because it’s just so much fun.
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