Karate Kid Legends (2025)

What is it with the 1980's reboots? I watched this one on a long haul flight recently, and whil I did not like the other one I watched (one the critics and audiences alike did like), I enjoyed this--which was not true of the aforementioned critics and general audience. So proceed with caution. This is the sixth entry in the series, gives its intended audience—which is to say, anyone who enjoyed any part of the other movies—what they came looking for. No more, and for me at least, no less. Li Fong (ably played by Ben Fong, who is both acrobatic and charming, and I hope to see him again) is a teenager who moved from Beijing to New York City’s Chinatown because his doctor mom (Ming-Na Wen) got hired by a Manhattan hospital. Li is a character we haven’t seen before. There are early scenes at kung fu school where we see him being mentored by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Like every protagonist before him, Li gets bullied by unlikable thugs. They train at a dojo near his school. Their leader is karate prodigy Connor Day , two-time winner of the Five Boroughs tournament. Li’s school also happens to be near an independent pizzeria owned by former boxer Victor Lipani. Victor’s charming and witty teenage daughter Mia (Sadie Stanley) works the cash register. She and Li hit it off. Naturally, in order to turn the heat up, Mia was once Connor’s girlfriend. Connor’s father, who owns the dojo, is a mob-connected underworld figure who loaned Victor the money to open the pizzeria and expects to be paid back soon. You see where this is going, and this movie is all about nostalgia, so there are no surprises, although it was surprisingly nice to see the chemistry between Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio. Chan in particular remains the all-time best at getting laughs through martial artistry, and there’s ascene between him and Fong that wouldn’t look out of place in any other of Chan’s stuntwork ballets.