Karate Kid is about a young boy from America who moves to China, and he sees a girl that is interested in him, but when there are some other boys that see him they start picking on the girl. Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) defends the girl and tries to help her out, but that only makes the young men even more mad, and Dre decides that he is going to fight after getting pushed down. This boy that Dre challenges knows Kung Fu and absolutely kicks Dre's butt. Dre has no chance against him.
These boys start picking on him until Mr. Han, a janitor / handyman (Jackie Chan), defends him against 6 boys at once. Han and Dre go to their Dojo and make a deal that they don't go after him until after the tournament if he promises to enter. Of course he promises to enter the tournament and the movie takes flight....
Karate Kid is just like all of the other Karate Kids in one simple aspect, the storyline, but that is the only thing, or so I'm told (I've never actually seen the other ones). I thought that the acting was very well done and the casting more so.
I went to see Karate Kid for the simple reason that Jaden Smith was in it. As much as I shouldn't have, I couldn't help but match this performance up to his father's performances..., but alas, I found it quite impossible. The good news about all of that is that Jaden Smith, if he keeps doing performances like that, he will soon not be working off of his father's name (Will Smith), but will have his own name to work off of.
At one point in time in this movie, they have a pre-teen girl and a pre-teen boy kissing, I'm normally not opposed to kissing in movies, but for me, I thought that they were a little bit too young to be kissing, and as for that point, there was a preteen girl that was dancing to "Pokerface" and she was dancing a little too seductively for her age. This is just a personal opinion, but I thought that they could have had her dance more for her age. Other then that I thought that it seemed like Jaden Smith could do no wrong in that movie.
AS for swears, there are 4 anatomical terms most of them in the same scene, 1 mild obscenity, name-calling (stupid), 1 religious exclamation. All being said, it was a rather clean movie, but with the main actor being a child not even 15, it better be.
The movie portrayed bullies very well, and I liked the way that when the boy was down, he had the will-power to get up to keep going. Those are two things that you can talk to your kids about after you watch the movie.
Very good movie and I thought that for a drama, which is not my favourite type of movie, I will give it an 8.5 out of ten, but since I can't give a decimal and it has to be a whole number it's a nine out of ten, and that is very good from me on a drama. This is definitely a go and watch. such a good movie to watch.
