Exploitation

I don’t normally do film reviews. It’s not something I want to get into. I love writing and I love movies but I have if a feeling if I tried to cross them my enjoyment of one would suffer for the benefit of the other.

When I go the cinema I like to enjoy what I’m seeing. Put myself in the movie and go with it. Whether it’s something that requires a lot of attention or a brain off, popcorn shovelling blockbuster. If I were to do reviews I’d need to take notes, look for flaws, and rate every individual line of script.

Also, sometimes, when my brain is in the right frame of mind I happen to enjoy some truly terrible movies. I know The Mummy was awful, but the 3ft long marshmallow I was eating whilst watching it meant I was having the time of my life. How could I possibly write anything negative about that experience?

That said, I do want to talk about a movie I saw this week. It was a movie that I didn’t really expect much from. I had a couple of hours to kill, I was in town, and my Cineworld pass was burning a hole in my pocket.

So I went in and entered the snaking maze of elasticated barriers they have to control the queuing masses. On this occasion there was no queue so I had to wind my way around the dividers with the three people selling the tickets watching me zig zag my way to their position. I could have just walked around the barriers but surely that would lead to some sort of anarchy. I got to the man with the ponytail behind the counter, gave him my card and said “One for the Karate Kid please”

So with ticket in hand and my contraband bag of store bought popcorn secreted away under my jacket I went and had what can only be described as the most uncomfortable viewing experience I have ever had to endure. I want to try and explain why and I just hope I don’t end up sounding like the Daily Mail.

The film itself is not terrible. Its pretty loyal to the original (despite a change of location and martial art style,) which while hardly a classic has a basis of one of the most enduring stories ever told. Boy adapts from what he knows and learns way to overcome evil. Story telling at its simplest. So if you’ve seen the original there is nothing really in the way of spoilers in this piece.

Jackie Chan as always was very watchable. While he’s no Mr. Miyagi, his character of Mr. Han has a charm and when Chan is on screen you should always keep watching because you can never be sure what surprises he has in store.

The issue I had was with the child actors, especially Jaden Smith in the lead role. I’m not taking about his performance. As child actors go he seems quite capable and has a certain confidence on screen that can only really come from having Will Smith as your father. Smith junior was quite good in the Pursuit of Happyness so he does have some chops.

Its been well documented that it Jaden Smith went to his parents and said he wanted to make a movie like the Karate Kid. Being the mega rich Hollywood power couple (Will Smith is married to actress and producer Jada Pinkett Smith) that they are they indulged their sons whim and production began on the movie.

So we have a twelve year old boy playing a twelve year old character that was originally played by a twenty two year old man playing a 16 year old character. This I think is very important. The Kung Fu shown in this movie is at times quite brutal and to see a child go through that is at times quite unsettling

Jaden plays a boy, Dre, who having moved to China, with his mother for her job, then struggles to settle in and is bullied in school. The rest is then pretty loyal to the original where the ‘Karate Kid’ learns (in this case) Kung Fu and goes on to battle his bullies in a big competition.

My first big problem was with the mother character. She was outright negligent. On his first day in China, she sends Dre off to find the maintenance man. He's has no idea where he is, it has just been established he can't speak the language and yet she is happy for him to go wandering the streets of Beijing whilst she catches 40 winks.

It never seems to be a problem for her that her son spends far too much time with a stranger. She never questions the nature of the relationship. Anything to distract her little boy. She is told that Dre is learning Kung Fu from the man who came to fix the shower and she accepts this as the legitimate explanation .

On one occasion she arrives in Mr. Han's house and finds him drunk and what can only be described as handcuffed and dancing (actually practising Kung Fu, but it looked like dancing) with her only child and she smiles as if it is the cutest thing she ever saw.

She watches as her soon partakes in violent competition and cheers him on, never once questioning if it is appropriate. Even when the doctor advises that he should not take any further part in the competition she still allows him to proceed.

Then there was what I guess was the romantic subplot. Dre forms a bond with Meiying, a young girl from his school who is studying violin in the hope of going to the Beijing Academy of Music. What should be a harmless friendship had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

Both actors are clearly children but the blossoming connection they have is played out in an adult manner from the overly romantic setting of their first kiss to the overtly sexual dancing of Meiying in the arcade and the way in which Dre reacts to it.

I feel Jaden Smith was way too young for such a role. Realistically the role needs an older actor and I don’t feel the material was appropriate for a 12 year old. Even for a 12 year old with better muscle definition than your average WWE wrestler. Twelve year old's should not have six packs. It has to be said the child spent far too much time with his shirt off.

In one of the first scenes between Smith and Chan, Mr. Han ,who having rescued the boy from the gang of bullies, brings the child back to his office and takes the unconscious Dre’s shirt off. He was healing his bruises but I couldn't help but recognise that this is not appropriate behaviour.

Naysayer’s will probably decry this is as paranoid poppycock. Or they might tell me that the movie isn’t aimed at me. It’s aimed at young children and I’m reading too much into an innocent movie. I’d counter that by saying that any remake of an 80’s classic is not just marketed for children but for the people who loved the original.

Maybe my problem is more with the 'sexualisation' and 'exploitation' of young people in the media (I sound like the Daily Mail...god dammit) than with the movie. We have children behaving in an adult manner on screen which we are expecting to buy as normal.

When 12 year old Chloe Moretz played Hit Girl in Kick Ass there was an outrage because of the violence in that movie and the language she used(Let’s see what you cunt’s can do) there was a media furore crying exploitation and child pornography. Kick -ass, however, was a cartoon-esque pastiche (in a good way) with fantastical situations with an over 15‘s certificate. The Karate Kid is a more realistic situation with more realistic characters with realistic violence in a kid’s movie.

It’s a bit of chicken or the egg thing. Do children these days behave overly grown up because they see children on screen doing it? Or are children on screen portrayed as being overly grown up because that’s the way children in real life are. I know which I think came first.