The Karate Kid: Ok... perhaps, maybe, kinda, sorta... I liked it...

For the past couple of months, I had seen countless posters - big, small, and everything in between - of Jaden Smith’s high-kicking silhouette plastered across every bus and BART station I traveled through.

Finally, around evening time on its opening weekend, I decided to take the plunge and see the film, thankfully dragging some relatives to go with me. We went to a medium-sized corporate theatre in Daly City, California. Bordering San Francisco and the Peninsula, the Daly City theatre is known as a popular spot on weekends for “tweens,” “teeny-boppers,” and families. As I entered the theatre I was met with another poster of Jaden Smith, this time however blown proportionately to my size, despite his stature as an incredibly scrawny, twelve year old (a fact that is accentuated throughout the film in a bizarre attempt to sexualize his body through gratuitous shirtless scenes...). Inside the theatre itself, I was met with the steady buzz of screaming (err... chattering...) children and their families. The average age of the kids seemed to be around ten or so. I felt as if I was the only non-parent over fifteen, but I did see a sparse sprinkling of young people around my age.

I really do hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed the film. I was sucked into it’s story and it simplistic constructions of good and bad: who is good and bad, what is good and bad, how good always trumps bad, and how bad sometimes (through revelations and epiphanies that happen in literally a matter of seconds) becomes good.

The film is not the greatest ever produced, nor it is the best written, acted, or edited (running longer than two hours... I almost fell asleep after the first half an hour, before all the good stuff came) film, but it was enjoyable movie. I tried to forget that the Chinese kids were set up very quickly as the villians - that, in fact, all things Chinese were at one point or another set up as an “other” - since Dre’s love interest and mentor are also Chinese. In reference to geography and locality in direct dialogue with the film’s narrative and characters, I thought about Kara Keeling’s discussion on Los Angeles as an postindustrial city in conversation with Set It Off. In some sense, Beijing is also on its way to becoming a city, similar to LA, that is both global as a major city that houses international business, commerce, and culture, as well as local as a place where folks are still struggling to survive and sustain basic necessities.

Some of the film’s other positives: the main character is a person of color, rare for any blockbuster, Hollywood film (and also something that another children's film that is coming out soon might want to take note of). His race is neither explicitly pointed to nor ignored. As the film progressed, though, I groaned when I saw Dre and his mother appear in Beijing, yet was surprised that, while a major component of the film, Chinese culture just narrowly escaped essentialism. I groaned again when I saw Dre’s only potential friend as a blonde, white boy, assuming that, while the main character is African American, the film would pit him against the bad Chinese kids while the white audience still had an opportunity to project themselves onto the screen. To that end, though, Dre’s potential friend disappears after a few scenes. Themes of loss, displacement, and coming-of-age are handled with care to ensure its characters integrity and well-being. All in all, the movie came in a nice little package that throws out some lessons for the kids.

I haven’t been to the theatre is quite some time. It’s been even longer since I’ve seen a film out of the target demographic that I can consider myself a part of. So, it’s certainly been awhile since I’ve experienced a children’s movie with... children. Needless to say, I forgot how emotionally liberated children feel when they experience movies, especially ones that are geared specifically to tugging at their tiny little heart strings. Completely wrapped up in the big screen, the big sounds, and the big kicks (as in *really* big kicks that sent the twelve year olds on screen flying across rooms and rings, a disturbing, hyper-violent, new development since the last kids action film I saw), I heard gasps, claps, and cheers without any feelings of anxiety, trepidation, or insecurity. I heard complete conversations kids were having with their parents, who attempted with all their might to simultaneously answer their kids’ questions while also lower their voices. The funniest thing, to me at least? Watching (and hearing) my aunt, at fifty years old, giggling and clapping right along with the youngin’s.

-Kenny Gong