Review: The Karate Kid

A few years ago, I was on a flight back from Europe watching movies on a tiny little screen on the back of an airplane seat.  I had gone through the movies I already wanted to see, and then I watched Grown-Ups.  However, I had passed over the remake of The Karate Kid without realizing it was there, and believe me, I would much rather have seen that than anything with Rob Schneider and David Spade in it.

I turned it on, figuring I'd give it a chance, and at about the time young Jaden Smith was starting to learn how to hang up his jacket, we were alerted that we were coming in for a landing.  The movie was turned off, and I shook my fist at fate for blocking me just before we got to the heart of the film (the training, of course, we all know how it ends), and swore I'd finish watching it.  And soon.

Cut to a few months ago, when I was scrolling through the free movies on demand with Time Warner Cable, and The Karate Kid showed up again.  "Hey," I said to myself because nobody else was in the room, "I should get around to finally watching that."  So I sat back, selected it, and got about forty-five minutes in before something came up and I had to pause it.  When I got back, the cable box had switched back over to the main menu screen, so I simply sat back again and selected "resume."

The film started over.  I tried to fast forward.  No dice.  For some reason, Time Warner didn't want me to miss a minute of Jaden Smith getting into arguments and fighting with his mother, the still ridiculously gorgeous Taraji P Henson.

"Well, forget that," I said to myself since I was still alone.

However, during the time I was preparing to move, I stumbled upon a copy on DVD that I bought back after the flight (not immediately, about four months after, I think) and then forgot about.  "Well," I said to myself (the only other creature around, my cat, did not care about what I had to say), "maybe it's time I finish this."