The MMA Kid

Will Smith hasn't made too many bad movie choices in his career. The track record speaks for itself. He is box office gold.

He's made very few regrettable choices in his career and you would think he would want his son Jaden to follow a similar path. Which is why it doesn't make any sense to me why he would let his son star in a Karate Kid remake with Jackie Chan as the new Mr. Miagi type character.

Remakes rarely ever turn out good. Watching them just remind everyone how good the original film was. That's why the best strategy to use is to steal the plot from an another classic movie and just tweak a few details here and there.

It's a time tested formula in Hollywood that is being used more and more as time goes on. Isn't 13 Going on 30 just a female version of Big? Wasn't The Mighty Ducks just a hockey version of The Bad News Bears? (I would list more, but then you would be critical of me for listing so many romantic comedies and start wondering how I knew they were so similar. I'll shut up now.)

This brings me to Never Back Down, the MMA movie that I finally had a chance to watch last week. As the movie progressed I found myself actually starting to like it. I expected a surefire unintentional comedy and was shocked that that was not what I was getting. With Djimon Hounsou and Volckok from the OC as part of the cast, how could it not be hilarious in all the right ways?

So why was I enjoying a movie with bad acting and cheesy lines so much? Maybe it was because I had seen a movie just like it before and didn't even realize it. It finally occurred to me about three quarters into the movie; what I was watching was an MMA version of The Karate Kid.

The model/actor who played the lead character was Daniel Larusso, Djimon Hounsou was Mr. Miyagi, Amber Heard (who looked so much better than she did in Pineapple Express) played the Elisabeth Shue concerned girlfriend, and no surprise that Volckok was Johnny Lawrence.

This movie was so 80's that it was impossible not to like. Model/actor got beat up by Volchok at the beginning, but had a lot of heart. Then he found a mentor and went through training to learn the ways of mixed martial arts. Throw in at least five montages with EMO blaring in the background and a token girl wearing the gloves love scene and you got yourself a full fledged story of triumph brought to you by the 1980's.

The movie even had a tournament and capped it all off with a little Rocky V fight in the parking lot twist. Of course the results of the tourney were completely improbable (model/actor had been training for a couple of months and he was submitting guys like he a brazilian jiu jitsu brown belt), but so was Daniel Larusso's crane kick.

Just in case anyone who was watching was unsure if the producers of this movie weren't completely ripping off The Karate Kid, it became obvious during the final scene when Volchok gave the completely unrealistic nod of respect to model/actor. There is no way that Johnny would have ever handed Daniel the trophy in real life and the same goes for Volchok and the nod.

By that time, I didn't really care though. It just made me think back to all the good that came from The Karate Kid.

So I'm here to tell Will and Jaden not remake an all time classic. Somebody already did it and pulled it off without telling anyone about it.