For starters, there was already a movie called The Karate Kid that everyone loves. It’s the tale of Jersey boy Daniel LaRusso who moves to Reseda and learns how to defend himself against the town dicks from his Japanese handyman. Other than the fact that Japanese handymen are hard to come by these days, there’s nothing wrong with the original Karate Kid — the plot still gripping, the contrast between ethnic East Coast kid and blond Cali dude as valid today as ever, and the karate on which the story focuses would still be cool to watch on screen today. It doesn’t need a remaking, it needs a re-release, to remind people how movies for kids used to be — genuine, inventive and unafraid to go all the way in caricaturing old Japanese people.

At this point I’d like you to view the trailer for new version of the film, to be released in June. Go ahead:

OK, so Will Smith’s son and Benjamin Button’s mom move from Detroit to Beijing because, according to IMDB, of the mom’s “latest career move.” Will Smith’s son falls for a Chinese girl in his class, Mei Ying, which in turn ticks off class bully “Cheng” who starts roundhouse kicking at the new kid. Will Smith’s son finds Jackie Chan, the handyman of his new building, who teaches him how to defend himself.

Here are the major problems with this plot:

1. It’s not a good “career move” for someone to move to mainland China, unless you’re upper management at a company outsourcing operations to China and you are offered a generous expat package from your company to move. The first scene in the trailer clearly shows that this single mother lives in the projects (in Detroit no less) and thus, it’s safe to assume she’s not VP of Asia region for Citigroup. For any women in the Detroit hood who may be reading this, moving to the place with the world’s largest supply of blue-collar laborers: not a good move.

2. The names of the kids are ridiculous. Will Smith’s son is named “Dre” — couldn’t get any more cliche than that. The object of Dre’s fever is Mei Ying, which means “beautiful flower”. And then there’s “Cheng”, the bad guy. To my knowledge, that’s not even a name in Mandarin, it’s a Cantonese name that no one would have in Beijing, and for the purposes of this film, just a word that sounds really Chinese.

3. There’s not a chance in hell that a handyman in Beijing would speak a fraction of the English that Mr. Han, Jackie Chan’s character, speaks in the trailer. Not a chance.

But for the sake of the film, I’ll suspend my disbelief and pretend that these plot elements could actually exist in real life. Even then, there’s a serious flaw in the new Karate Kid and it’s the other reason the film needs a new title. Here it is:

IT’S NOT KARATE!!!

They’re in Beijing, not Okinawa! He’s Mr. Han, not Mr. Miyagi! They’re doing Kung Fu, not Karate. You can’t just call it The Karate Kid!!!

You wouldn’t call it “The Black Karate Kid”, would you? Of course not, that’d be racially insensitive. And so is calling this film “The Karate Kid”. It takes the racial insensitivity of the Karate Kid films to new heights.

And for me, Mr. Miyagi catching flies with a pair of chopsticks was just right.

Just for fun, here are the trailers for the real Karate Kid films:

Part One

Part Two

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