For those who remember seeing the 1984 classic film, The Karate Kid you will be pleasantly surprised with the remake. Now I will be first to admit that I was a little worried about seeing an updated version. Most remakes are a sad shadow of the original but lucky for us, The Karate Kid 2010 does a great job of capturing the spirit of the first one but is different enough to keep your attention.
From the jump, you know that things are different. The kid’s name isn’t Daniel, its Dre. His family moves from Detroit to China. The Dre is a lot younger than Daniel. And Dre doesn’t learn karate; he learns kung fu which is taught in China. Karate is taught in Japan. The audience didn’t know or care. Yet, with all of those differences, the movie still works.
The shell of The Karate Kid as the same. Dre is the new kid and gets beat up twice by a bully over a girl. The second beat down and Dre gets BEAT DOWN, is stopped by Mr. Han, the apartment handy man. Who teaches the bullies a lesson on beat downs. Han teaches Dre the art of Kung Fu and they enter the local tournament. You hear the classic line about the leg and Dre wins. YEAH!
