'Karate Kid: Legends' is Legendarily Forgettable
I'd rather be kicked in the head multiple times than see this movie again. Karate Kid: Legends is a lazy, rushed mess that fails to capture the magic the original Karate Kid contained, not to mention Netflix's Cobra Kai. Watching the movie with a preview audience, many people laughed and cheered at the moments the filmmakers had intended. The only problem is that test audiences are comprised of families with their children who want their kids to have a good time. So, they may lie to themselves or embellish their reactions to make their children happy. They don't realistically resemble how audiences will feel. Karate Kid: Legends is aimed to be fan-pleasing, but only to the lowest common denominator. It's almost certain that this movie will not win over audiences.
The movie starts on a note that doesn't even carry over to the plot by the end of the movie. We begin with a flashback of Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) training with Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita). The scene only exists to please fans. They go over some sort of technique as the screen is riddled with 2D-drawn cartoons of the moves Daniel is learning, which are more distracting than educational. We then cut to Beijing, China, in the present day. Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) is training a group of students in the art of Karate. He gets a call from Dr. Fong (Ming-Na Wen). She tells him she doesn't want what happened to her last son to happen to her other child due to his instructions. If you don't trust him, then why talk to him at all? The Doctor moves with her son, Li Fong (Ben Wang), to New York City, where the story repeats all the beats from the first film all over again.
Li meets Mia Lipani (Sadie Stanley) and her father, Victor (Joshua Jackson). The two work at a pizza shop where a group of karate-trained teenagers are harassing their business. Worse yet, Mia knows a friend of the assailants and has a coexisting relationship with him. Why? Oh yeah, because in the original, Daniel's love interest is friends with the guy who was assaulting him. Later, Li gets attacked on the train by the Karate gang in front of Mia. Ya know, to echo what happened when Daniel got the tar beat out of him in the original film by Ali's "friend."
At one point, the movie seems to be heading in a different direction when Li offers to train Victor in Karate so he can defend his store. However, the film then regresses to a familiar plot line when Mr. Han inexplicably appears in New York. Not only that, but he shows up by breaking into Li's apartment and then fighting him in the dark. That's prosecutable! So, the movie can keep the fan service gravy train going; Mr. Han flies out to California to visit Daniel at the apartment complex where he lived in the first film. Does he still live there? If so, that's sad. You'd think he'd be more successful than his mother, who was struggling to make ends meet. He wants Daniel to assist him in training Li in a Karate competition. Daniel doesn't initially accept, but then flies to New York anyway. Does Li really need both trainers? Well, Mr. Han was in the remake, and Daniel is in the original, so the studio has to milk that nostalgia money instead of coming up with anything original.
The movie ends exactly the way the original does, down to the freeze frame. When it's over, you'll feel exhausted by its constant need for montages that make the Rocky 4's non-stop montages look like a French New Wave film. The movie's editing is horrendous. It moves so fast, with so many terribly inserted wipe cuts, that it's head-spinning. The movie cuts from an action scene to dialogue to a training montage at breakneck speed in order to reach the ending in a hurry. As for the humor, do you think record skips are funny in trailers? Well, this movie does it twice. Both times were equally cringy. The movie's one saving grace could be its combat, which, although the choreography is impressive, it's way over the top.
The Karate Kid didn't have over-the-top action. It was all grounded within the realm of believability. Was it really how Karate works? Is there truly a wax-on, wax-off technique? Probably not, but it was believable. This action comes off from something you'd see in a full-blown Jackie Chan film. I get the film is trying to top the action from a 1984 film by emulating Jackie, but it's too much. It's a sequel, so go bigger without thinking about why. The Karate Kid: Legends is a tiresome, lazy exercise in studio control over individual filmmaking. If this was the fault of the writers and director, with no studio tampering, then that's shockingly bad. Not only is Karate Kid: Legends a lame sequel, but it's also one of the worst sequels to have come out since The Matrix Resurrections.
