Jun 26, 2010
The fact of the matter is it’s been 26 years since the first Streaming Watch The Karate Kid Online Movie Free, and given how many other movies have relied on the exact same formula, a full-fledged remake is extremely fair game. By moving things to China and casting 11-year-old Jaden Smith (as opposed to the 25-year-old Ralph Macchio of the original), Sony successfully set a fresh coat of paint on the rickety aged story, and despite a gargantuan running time and paper-thin characters, it’s kind of nice to see yet another kid learn the crane pose.
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It’s hard to know who to credit or blame for the film, since director Harald Zwart was brought in appropriately after things have been in development, and the film’s likely true authors, Will Smith and the Chinese government that authorized the on-location production, are entirely offscreen. But even though The Karate Kid is a paint-by-numbers remake that exists so Smith can make his kid a star and China can promote itself to the West, it’s also exceptionally well shot, frequently funny and touching, and perhaps most importantly, a vehicle for a great Jackie Chan performance. It’s not quite sufficient to justify a two and a half length, but it comes close.
As for the plot, imagine the original Watch The Karate Kid with a handful of language barriers tossed in. Dre (Jaden Smith) and his mom (Taraji P. Henson) leave Detroit for brighter career prospects in Beijing, where Dre quickly tussles with the local group of thugs who also happen to be kung fu masters. Dre starts up a showy flirtation with Meiying (Wenwen Han), who’s spoken for by head baddie Cheng (Zhenwei Wang), and soon he’s hiding from these kids just about every day after school. In the middle of one particularly mean fight Dre is rescued by his apartment building’s reclusive handyman Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), who reluctantly agrees to teach Dre kung fu but only after taking the arrogant tween down a peg or two. Lessons are learned, poses are struck, a friendship begins to blossom– cue the training montage.
Movie: The Karate Kid (2010)
- Director : Harald Zwart
- Release Date : 11 June 2010 (USA)
- Run Time : 140 min
- Country : USA , China
- Genre : Action , Drama , Family , Sport See »
- MPAA : Rated PG for bullying, martial arts action violence and some mild language.
Trivia : The style of Kung Fu that the woman standing on the dragon’s head is practicing (at the temple, before the dragon well) is Crane Style Kung Fu. Practitioners of this style are very adept at balancing on one foot, as a crane does. It is interesting to note that she is controlling a cobra (likely in the same style as a snake charmer). This could possibly be a nod to the original in which Daniel defeated a member of the Cobra Kai dojo by using the “Crane technique”.
It actually takes nearly an hour for the training montage to show up, thanks to Watch The Karate Kid Free’s glacial pace and greater interest in Beijing scenery than creating believable characters and letting us spend time with them. Just when Dre’s training with Mr. Han picks up narrative steam, we’re stuck watching Dre’s baby romance with Meiying and constant shots of Beijing landmarks, so much that you can almost hear Chinese officials saying “Include that! It looks great on the postcards!” Cinematographer Roger Pratt captures the city and the surrounding countryside beautifully, but precious little of it serves the film’s rote story. We get a great sense of Beijing scenery, certain, but none of how it impacts Dre and his mom, who experience so little actual culture clash they may as effectively be in Epcot.
It’s truly fascinating to watch snotty and rambunctious Dre transform into a confident warrior, and the charismatic Smith and expert Chan build a believably tender and touching surrogate father-son relationship. Unfortunately all of the other characters fall a little flat, from the villainous rival kung fu instructor who glowers like a Mortal Kombat baddie to the quite and blank Meiying and even Dre’s mom, who played by Oscar-nominee Henson feels a good deal far more like a plot device than an actual human. Direct Zwart does nicely handling the violence of the fight scenes and the emotional bond between Dre and Mr. Han, but everything else falls victim to his experience with broad children’s comedies like Agent Cody Banks.
There’s a ton to swallow with this new Watch The Karate Kid Online– you have to accept that privileged child of Hollywood Jaden Smith is now a movie star, that a remake of a beloved 80s classic isn’t automatically a travesty, and that about an hour and a half’s worth of great material within a two and a half hour running time is a reasonable ratio. In any other summer, it might not be well worth the trip, but summer 2010 is proving to be unusually dismal, and at this point there are worse things than sitting in the air conditioning, marveling at some beautiful cinematography and outstanding fight choreography, and witnessing the acting rebirth of Jackie Chan.
Goofs : Continuity: The plane shown taking off to take the Parkers to China is different than the one shown landing in China. The planes shown have different registration numbers which are seen on the fuselages (specifically B-2460 and B-2443).
Watch The Karate Kid Movie, recognized as The Kung Fu Kid in China and Best Kid in Japan and South Korea, is a 2010 martial arts remake of the 1984 film of the same name. Directed by Harald Zwart, made by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, the remake stars Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. Principal photography for the film took place in Beijing, China; filming began around July 2009 and ended on October 16, 2009. The Karate Kid was released theatrically in the United States on June 11, 2010 and Singapore a day earlier on June 10, 2010.
The plot concerns a 12-year-old boy from Detroit who moves to China with his mother and incurs the wrath of the neighborhood bully. He makes an unlikely ally in the form of his aging maintenance man, Mr. Han, a kung fu master who teaches him the secrets to self-defense.
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