The Karate Kid - ***

The 1980s are cool... again. Or at least that's what Hollywood thinks. 80s throwbacks, homages, updates, re-makes, reboots, and spoofs are all the rage these days, and the new Karate Kid had all the potential, and expectation, to simply be lumped in as another generic rip-off of a popular 80s classic. Surprisingly that's not what it actually is. Instead it's not only a worthy re-make, but also a really good film in its own right. The best thing that I can say about the The Karate Kid is that it feels new. Though it tells the same story as the original film, but in a different way, which is always nice, despite what fans might think. Why bother watching a re-make if it's exactly the same as the film on which it's based? Maybe it's just that the story is transplanted to China and follows a twelve year-old Jaden Smith, but it has a freshness to it that will make you forget to look for similarities with the original. At 140 minutes, the film runs a little too long and, to be honest, the first half hour could easily have been trimmed, though it does contain a few nice character moments. But once you get past that, and Jackie Chan enters, it's a really enjoyable film. I never thought I'd say it, but Jackie Chan gives an amazing performance, one of the best of the year, even. And Jaden Smith isn't so bad, either. It's not a perfect movie, but it's a lot better than it needed to be.

The Spy Next Door - **1/2

Watching this film made me discover that the secret to making a great tough-guy-takes-care-of-children film is casting an actor that has trouble speaking English. And who better to cast than Jackie Chan, the new master of botching the English language? Watching Chan fumble over our language is one of the purest delights in modern cinema. Okay, maybe that's taking a little too far, but it's pretty fantastic, and I'm thoroughly convinced that the writers of this film were aware of that fact; why else would they burden Mr. Chan with the task of saying a word like "Frankenstein?" The film is worth watching for that one line.

You know the story: action star is entrusted with the care of children who don't like him. Hijinks ensue. While this is no Kindergarten Cop, The Spy Next Door actually does have a fair amount of charm. I went into this thing with a couple of derisory tweets already formulating in my head, but was surprised to find that Jackie Chan's tender side kind of makes this film work. As silly as it may sound, a scene in which Chan fights off a slew of bad guys while juggling a little girl's pet turtle is particularly entertaining. But silliness is what makes this film go: the villains are goofy, the plot is nonsensical, and it features a kid in third grade who accidentally downloads top-secret CIA documents onto his iPod, mistaking them for bootleg shows of an obscure German metal band. Yup, that really happened.

But don't get me wrong, this isn't a brilliant film. Even quite a bit of the aforementioned silliness doesn't exactly land, and there's plenty of awkwardness throughout, like when the kids' mother bakes them cookies, and then pretty much admonishes them for existing, because she can't pursue her own happiness with men that they don't like. And while one of the kids is kind of adorable, I sometimes felt like passing through the screen and rubbing Metal Kid's face in a pile of dirt. That said, I think that enough of this film works, and the stuff that doesn't is pretty harmless, and this film inspires more laughs than it ever should have, even if you're sometimes (a lot of the time) laughing at it. I wasn't always sure exactly why I was laughing, but the fact that I was laughing at all made this a pretty nice surprise.