Karate Kid: Legends

This weekend, Karate Kid: Legends, the newest film in the Karate Kid franchise released in theaters. Karate Kid: Legends follows Li Fong a student of Kung Fu, as he moves to New York and trains to compete in The Five Boroughs, a karate competition. I enjoyed the original Karate Kid but all the rest were not very good so I was hoping this movie would be closer in quality to the original more so than the sequels.

This movie is a mixed bag for me. However, there is some fun to be had with it. Of course, there is the novelty of seeing Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchino on screen together training a new kid in karate and kung fu. Everything with the training sequence and the final fight was entertaining. I also thought Ben Wang was pretty good in the lead. He has enough charisma to carry the movie on his own when Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchino aren't in it. I also found it to be a bit faster-paced than most of the other films as well as quite a bit funnier. The banter between Mr. Han and Daniel LaRusso was a lot of fun and something I wish we would have gotten more of.

While superficially it is an entertaining film, from a plot and story level, it is not good. The trailers seem to be intentionally misleading about the film. Everything the trailers show happens in the final 30-40 minutes of the movies. The whole first half feels like a completely different movie with Li training a pizza man boxer in the art of kung fu which ends up being the inciting incident for his joining the tournament. The movie starts as a rehash of the original film, goes into this plot about the pizza man, and then goes back to Karate Kid rehash and the two parts don't feel remotely compatible. The trailers also make it seem like Ralph Macchino is a major part of the movie when in reality, he is in it for maybe 10-15 minutes. There is really no logical reason for Daniel LaRusso to be in the movie at all other than as a fan service type moment. You could pull him out and it would make no difference.

Overall, on a surface level, it does make for an entertaining 90 minutes. However, when you get down to the actual plot and story, it is a bit of a mess. If you are expecting more of a buddy movie with Jackie Chan and Daniel LaRusso training Li, that is not what this is except for the last 30 minutes.

Score: 6/10 Grade: C+ Recommendation: Wait to stream it