Review for Jackie Chan & The Kung Fu Kid

Introduction

No, this isn't the alternate title for the recent Karate Kid remake (is there any actual karate in it?); this is the new Jackie Chan movie being brought to the UK by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment. But given that the film's actual English title is Looking For Jackie, and this "Jackie Chan and the Kung Fu Kid" is the result of a hasty DVD re-branding, you can be forgiven for cynically suspecting that there is a bit of bandwagon jumping going on. Regardless of serendipitous release dates, the film will still have to stand on its own.


Zhang Yi-Shan is a typical junior high school kid, he's not too fond of school, but he loves Jackie Chan movies, and wishes to emulate his idol. He'd much rather spend his time dreaming of being cast in Jackie's next movie than waking up in time for school, much to the exasperation of his grandmother. But his lacklustre efforts are telling at school, where he's failing his classes, yet he refuses to go home to Beijing, where his paternal grandmother usually spends the holidays tutoring him to within an inch of his life. He'd much rather stay at home in Indonesia where it's nice and sunny even in the winter.


But his low grades invite ridicule from his schoolmates, and soon he swears to get even. When he learns that Jackie's next movie is going to be shot in Beijing, he suddenly is agreeable to spending time with his other grandparents, but of course the first thing he does when he gets off the plane is to go looking for Jackie instead. His plan for success is this, find Jackie, become his disciple, learn kung fu, and kick the behinds of all his tormentors. But failing his Chinese classes presents a problem when he can't read the road signs, and soon he's heading in completely the wrong direction, and into a grand adventure.

Conclusion

Jackie Chan and the Kung Fu Kid is an enjoyable movie for younger audiences, although the 12 rating perhaps rates it out of the most desirable and appropriate demographic. It's a coming of age story that follows the adventures of one happy go lucky boy with a somewhat skewed perspective on how the world works. If there is a slight niggle that I had with the plot, it's that at age sixteen, Yi-Shan really should know better. But seeing some of the pickles that he gets himself into, a younger protagonist may have been pushing things a bit. And Yi-Shan has to have some ability with the old martial arts himself. As a kung fu Huckleberry Finn, it's ideal kids' entertainment, edgy enough to appeal to older kids, with a couple of genuinely scary moments. But there's a strong message at the film's heart, a couple of charming cameos to tease fans of classic Hong Kong cinema, and of course the inimitable Jackie Chan himself. It is a short film, digitally shot, and on an apparently low budget. It has the sort of production values that better suit a television movie than a theatrical feature, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.


I hope the retail disc is nothing like the menuless DVD-R screener that I got, with vanilla 2.0 Mandarin, a letterbox standards conversion image, zoom unfriendly burnt in English and Chinese subtitles, and what I thought was a glitch, where the film froze, then skipped back thirty seconds and started again. It wasn't a glitch; the film had just been burnt onto the disc that way. If the retail disc is anything like this, just say no.