The Karate Kid - Review

When is the last time you forgot all about yourself and laughed your heart out, clapped in full enthusiasm for a movie?

When is the last time the victory of a protagonist made you feel like as if it is your victory?

When is the last time you are ready to overlook all the loopholes in the movie just for the appeal it makes to your heart?

This one may make you do all these...



This is a light hearted coming of age movie of a twelve year boy who struggles to cope with the change in his living environment due the change in working location of his mother.its a simple story told in a simple way without much complications of subplots.

The story revolve around dre parker played exceedingly well by jaden smith, who along with his mother moves to china from detroit due to her work commitments. there he got attracted towards a young violinist, Mei Ying, which puts him under the wrath of a kung fu prodigy named cheng. humiliated by him,dre was again shattered and pleased at the same time to know that both cheng and mei ying were on the same school as he is.

The torment for dre continues in the hands of cheng,during a particular point where the beating gets more brutal,Mr.han ,played by jackie chan comes to the rescue. then the rest of the story deals with the metamorphosis of dre in the hands of mr.han in to a kung fu expert, and how he manages to keep his head out of the harassment caused by cheng group.

Performance wise the movie is excellent, jackie chan has a scorching screen presence which was well made use of, and the surprise factoe here is actually jaden who simply excels in his role. actually i was personally surprised to see such a performance from him after annoying us in ,'the pursuit of happiness' and 'the day the earth stood still'. apart from the lead,
Taraji P.Henson , who plays sherry parker, dre's single mother and Wenwen Han, aho plays dre's crush attracts some attention.apart from them none of the cast attracts attention, that can be attributed to their limited time on screen.

Technically the movie is more than adequate for a kid movie.having said all these this is not a perfect movie.the romance between dre and mei ying was very poorly conceived.i dont know what sort of logic exists between snogging of two kids who havent even hit puberty with respect to their age!!!another ridiculous thing about the movie is its title, not even a single word of karate was used in the movie by any of the characters also given the fact that the movie is basically about kung fu, why calling it 'The karate kid', instead of 'The kung fu kid'?????

But as i mentioned above all these things can be overlooked for some hearty performances by the lead cast and for its simple and a heartfelt story.

Go for it to find out why Jackie chan is said have no substitute, and also let out the kid inside your heart.

Note:don't judge this movie by its IMDB rating,as this movie is said to be a 1984 movie of the same name. people who watched the original version naturally won't like this one,being a remake.