‘Karate Kid: Legends’ is Mildly Diverting

May 29, 2025

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Legen- (wait for it?) -dary? (CREDIT: Jonathan Wenk/Columbia Pictures)

Starring: Ben Wang, Jackie Chan, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen, Ralph Macchio, Joshua Jackson, Aramis Knight, Wyatt Oleff

Director: Jonathan Entwistle

Running Time: 94 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Violence, Officially Sanctioned or Otherwise

Release Date: May 30, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Li Fong (Ben Wang) is a perfectly pleasant teenage boy living in Beijing with his doctor mother (Ming-Na Wen) who must make his way to the Big Apple when she lands a job in NYC. But his head and his heart remain behind in China, particularly the kung fu school of the legendary Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Alas, Mom has forbidden fighting for this new beginning, but little do they know that Li is just the latest protagonist in a generations-spanning martial arts saga. In the meantime, he also becomes close with a girl named Mia (Sadie Stanley) and her dad (Joshua Jackson) from the local pizza place, which only draws him further into the world of combat sports.

What Made an Impression?: The New Kid in Town: The first Karate Kid movie arrived in theaters more than 40 years ago. But I haven’t seen any of them, nor have I watched the Cobra Kai spinoff series, though I have absorbed the key details by dint of cultural ubiquity. Which is all to say: Karate Kid: Legends is perfectly easy to follow for newbies. Its main focus is on the characters introduced in this chapter after all, and any connections with the returning favorites are thoroughly explained to ward off any potential confusion. Was it already established in the 2010 Karate Kid remake that Mr. Han knew Mr. Miyagi? I don’t know, but also, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t know. Does it make sense that Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is recruited all the way from L.A. to help train Li? No, but I guess that just happens when you’re putting together a supergroup.
The Other Story: A good chunk of Legends‘ plot is devoted to a story lane that isn’t even hinted at in the trailers. I wouldn’t call it a spoiler to reveal it, but I won’t say much more, since it can be fun when a movie shamelessly breaks the promises it made with its audience in the promo material. But at least let me tease what I’m hinting about by wondering aloud: who knew that Joshua Jackson would have a bigger role than Ralph Macchio in a Karate Kid movie in 2025 (or any year)? And who could have ever guessed that would be a good thing?
Give Me a Slice: When Li first visits Mia and her dad’s pizza shop, he cluelessly asks them if they have any stuffed crust pies. He immediately gets chewed out for his very un-Manhattan request and then gets stuck with “Deep Dish” for a nickname. And that’s what passes for a joke in this movie. Although the script doesn’t really commit to this razzing, since he’s addressed by that epithet just a handful of times. I wish it had happened more often.

Karate Kid: Legends is Recommended If You Like: Dawson’s Creek more than Karate Kid

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Kickpunches

‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ is a Mighty Good Time

August 1, 2023

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Mayhem in More Than Just a Half-Shell (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies)

Starring: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon, Jackie Chan, Ayo Edebri, Ice Cube, Hannibal Burress, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Natasia Demetriou, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph

Director: Jeff Rowe

Running Time: 100 Minutes

Rating: PG for Stylized Action Violence and Jokes with a Rude ‘Tude

Release Date: August 2, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael (Micah Abbey, Nicolas Cantu, Shamon Brown Jr., and Brady Noon, respectively) just want to spend more time living out of the sewers. Is that too much to ask?! Alas, their adoptive father Splinter (Jackie Chan) insists that they must remain in the shadows. He’s a walking and talking rat, and they’re walking and talking turtles, and all the evidence indicates that humans just aren’t ready to interact with mutated animals. But the boys are growing up, and New York City has plenty of delicious pizza. So when they befriend budding journalist April O’Neil (Ayo Edebiri), they really start to believe that humans are worth getting to know. And when they encounter a cadre of other mutants led by the giant housefly Superfly (Ice Cube) intent on taking over the surface world, they decide that they must become humanity’s protectors.

What Made an Impression?: Not Afraid to Be Scary: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a fascinatingly enduring franchise. What began as a reputedly dark comic book in the 80s turned into an inescapable cheesy phenomenon with the live-action 90s films. It was a supernova that burned out quickly, but it’s hung around with occasional reboots and several TV series. You don’t need to know any of that backstory to enjoy Mutant Mayhem. But you do have to be comfortable with some kid-targeted entertainment that isn’t afraid to get dark. The animation and the fantastical nature softens the edges a bit, but still, this is a movie where the threat of mutant-on-mutant and mutant-on-human violence is very real. Younger viewers might be spooked a bit, but they’ll appreciate how hardy the heroism feels.
Milking the Gags: The turtles are a bunch of adolescent jokesters, so any TMNT flick worth its ooze will deliver the laughs. Mutant Mayhem pulls this off by crafting its own yuks from the ground up. There’s one particularly satisfying running gag about whether or not the turtles can be milked. (They don’t have nipples! … Or do they?) Two of the producers and screenwriters are Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen (the latter of whom also voices mutant warthog Bebop), and you can just feel how much they’ve been itching to put their own spin on these characters for quite some time. These aren’t just tossed-off quips and catchphrases, but zingers and character beats that reward you for paying attention.
Sliced-and-Diced Animation: The sharpness of the comedy meets its match in the animation, with every cel feeling like it’s been lovingly sliced by a katana blade. This is no standard-issue CG rendering; instead, deep thought has clearly been considered about what style fits the story’s personality. It’s an irreverent, adrenaline-filled adventure crossed with a neon sugar rush. Every pixel feels like it’s working, and the whole picture just undeniably pops on screen.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is Recommended If You Like: Pizza, Viral puking videos, The Spider-Verse

Grade: 4 out of 5 Half-Shells

This Is a Movie Review: It’s Chan vs. Brosnan in Revenge Thriller ‘The Foreigner’

October 12, 2017

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CREDIT: STX Films

This review was originally posted on News Cult in October 2017.

The Foreigner – It’s Chan vs. Brosnan in Revenge Thriller ‘The Foreigner’

Starring: Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan

Director: Martin Campbell

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Frequent Explosions, Booby-Trap Puncture Wounds, and a Bit of Scheme-Based Shagging

Release Date: October 13, 2017

At age 63, Jackie Chan is still allowed to shimmy down roofs, walls, and pipes. And good for him, because while what he pulls off stunt-wise in The Foreigner is nowhere near as relentless as his early films, his twists, spins, and rolls still look like the most natural things in the world for him to be doing. But this revenge thriller places a new skill at the top of Chan’s repertoire: survivalism. As a meek London business businessman, Ngoc Minh Quan’s (Chan) knack for springing camouflaged traps with tree branches and leaves is in the key of a doomsday prepper, but actually they represent the horrors of a native land he would rather forget but will summon if he has to.

Quan’s journey for vengeance is set off by a bomb that detonates in a busy street, killing his daughter Fan (Katie Leung, aka Cho Chang from Harry Potter). But he has had the capacity for a long time to go off on a one-man spree to make terrorists pay. He was a trained killer in his home country (it is a little confusing whether Quan is supposed to be Vietnamese, or ethnically Chinese but born in Vietnam, or something else) who sought a more peaceful life by moving to England, but lost two of his children along the way. To further ramp up the tragic backstory, his wife died while giving birth to Fan. So when Fan dies, it is the classic revenge setup of the man who has nothing left to lose. The Foreigner does not add much to this genre, save for Chan’s heavily haunted performance, his eyelids and hair permanently weighed down by the debris of the blast.

Those responsible for the bombing are certain members of the IRA attempting to stir up trouble, which Quan does not much care about, but the film certainly does. There is a sense of a bigger conflict swallowing up a few small people, similar to Edge of Darkness, director Martin Campbell’s last entry in the revenge field. But where that earlier film had an easily identifiable conspiracy hook, The Foreigner’s political conflicts are much more convoluted. For the uninitiated, it is hard to make heads or tails of what the IRA’s issues with the UK are, and why they should be flaring up now. That confusion is papered over a bit by the compelling presence of Pierce Brosnan as government official Liam Hennessy, whose association with the IRA may not be as reformed as he would like to pretend. The cat-and-mouse struggle between Chan and Brosnan is a high-quality white-knuckle battle between two vets who know exactly what they’re doing. But they are surrounded by a hodgepodge of other goings-on that do not come together for a clear message or purpose.

The Foreigner is Recommended If You Like: Apocalypse Prepping, Rambo, Edge of Darkness

Grade: 3 out of 5 Tree Branch Traps

This Is a Movie Review: ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie’ is Stupidly the Best Father-Son Bonding Movie in Ages

September 22, 2017

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CREDIT: Warner Bros.

This post was originally published on News Cult in September 2017.

Starring: Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Olivia Munn, Jackie Chan, Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Zach Woods

Directors: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, and Bob Logan

Running Time: 101 Minutes

Rating: PG for Ripped-Off Lego Limbs and Feline-on-Toy Destruction

Release Date: September 22, 2017

If you want to learn how to nail down comic timing, you could do much worse than studying the repartee in The Lego Ninjago Movie. This second spin-off of the toy block film franchise and the first based on the speciality Ninjago line (which also already has its own long-running Cartoon Network TV show) should ostensibly be the most action-oriented of the series, but its cast ensures that it is instead defined by the cheeky humor that has buoyed each of the Lego films thus far. The voices of the high school-age core ninja group include improv and sketch veterans like Fred Armisen, Abbi Jacobson, Kumail Nanjiani, and Zach Woods. And their leader, Master Wu, is brought to life by the always comedically inclined martial arts legend Jackie Chan. As they protect their home city of Ninjago and seek to become one with the elements, they pop off quips like “Can I be the element of surprise?” and display their meta bona fides by complaining about Wu’s “needlessly cryptic metaphors.”

The thrust of the plot mostly revolves around Green Ninja Lloyd (Dave Franco) and his struggle against his father Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux), a four-armed warlord seeking to conquer Ninjago who keeps mispronouncing (or correctly pronouncing?) his son’s name as “L-loyd.” Lloyd’s attempts to reconcile with the father who abandoned and forgot about him make for the dopily cliché stuff of legend. This is the same evil-father/chosen-one-son knockoff typical of so many Star Wars copycats. But of course, that dopiness is the point. In a world where love stories begin by opponents in war detecting unbearable beauty on opposite sides of the battlefield and the biggest hit on the radio is the weirdly personal “Boo Lloyd!,” fully embracing clichés only makes sense.

For those of you wondering how the real world intervenes in the block world this time around, it should be noted that there is a cute kitty cat who stomps around the town. Dubbed “Meowthra,” this feline is the secondary villain, the monster that indiscriminately and unknowingly ruins intricately designed block structures.

Where Ninjago falters is in its actions sequences. To be fair, its earthbound fighting moments have plenty of visual wit, but when the ninjas take to the skies, the aerial sequences are as unintelligible as the Transformers series at its worst. But that will only be a minor bother when you make it through to the end credits and fall in love with the latest buoyantly terrific song from a Lego movie.

The Lego Ninjago Movie is Recommended If You Like: Lego’s entire filmography, Star Wars father-son relationship parodies, Silicon Valley, Finding the humor in “Cat’s in the Cradle”

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Ninjanuities