Mr Han (Jackie Chan) teaches the bullied outsider Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) a thing or two about fighting and life in The Karate Kid.

The child actor is a funny, funny thing. The ability for a child star to carry a film and not irritate by being overly precocious (Shirley Temple was absolutely not cute), obnoxious (Boo in Monsters, Inc., though not technically a child) or tooth-rottingly adorable (I'm looking at you Abigail Breslin) is rare.

Some can pull it off, and occasionally win accolades for their performances - think of Haley Joel Osment pre-divo days in The Sixth Sense, any of the young cast in Stand By Me, or a pre-adolescent Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Even more difficult is the ability to straddle child- and adulthood; few have successfully made the transition. For every Foster, Kurt Russell (who went from Disney to Escape From New York), or Anna Paquin (an Oscar-winner for The Piano and current star of True Blood) there's a Dakota Fanning (still trying to figure out if she'll have a career) or Macauley "Home Alone" Culkin. Predicting stardom is even trickier.

So it's with bated breath many industry-watchers approached the unnecessary remake of the semi-classic The Karate Kid. The '80s Ralph Macchio/Pat Morita ("Wax on. Wax off.") coming-of-ager has something of a cult following now, and the idea of yet another raid on the vault left many nonplussed. Then news leaked that Hollywood super-couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith would produce and their son Jaden would star after he made an impression alongside his father in The Pursuit of Happyness. Things were looking ... even more confusing. A vanity project for a 12-year-old? Really?

The Karate Kid's domestic release in the United States left scores of box office pundits stunned. The all-important opening weekend racked up over $55 million in ticket sales - many of which were discount seats to the family-rated film. What happened? Where did this audience come from? And why did they turn The Karate Kid into the summer (to that point) dark horse? Two words: Jaden Smith.

Whether or not the film is any good is irrelevant. The younger Smith has all the makings of a star, and The Karate Kid is the perfect launch pad: it has the global currency required to make him a familiar face (the story is relocated to China), an urban, post-millennial and recognizable central family, and an international co-star who single-handedly sells the film without so much as a word of dialogue (Jackie Chan). What could go wrong?

A nasty backlash, that's what could go wrong.

Almost as soon as the film was confirmed a hit, a petty and seemingly out of nowhere hate campaign against Smith started up. While on the publicity circuit for the movie, Smith refused to "behave", meaning he refused to act less than his age or pretend he didn't have famous parents or wasn't developing opinions and ideas of his own.

He gave David Letterman a run for his money, and that's still hard to do. By not pandering to the masses or the media, Smith riled them up and had labels like "brat," "ingrate," and "entitled" thrown at him. No wonder being a child star is difficult.

Owen Gleiberman, in Entertainment Weekly, uttered what no one else dared to when he theorized race was at play here. He may have a point. Evidently audiences prefer black child stars to be mentioned in the same breath as "gun charges" and "drug rehab." When a black star acts like one, people see red. Even when he was an early industry savior.

But how is the film we should be judging him on?

In this version of the film, Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) sets out on the road to being a better person though kung fu under Mr Han's (Chan) tutelage. He moves to China with his car company executive mother Sherry (Taraji P. Henson) and is naturally the new fish out of water. He befriends Meiying (Han Wenwen) but has school bully Cheng (Wang Zhenwei) to contend with. Han, a janitor and a bit of a hermit, takes him under wing after a particularly vicious beating by Cheng, and the waxing begins. Or rather, the jacket on- and offing.

Instead of coming down on Smith, people should be screaming about the stock narrative and disingenuous tone of the film. The original Kid had an admitted goofiness about it, but it also has a sweetly sincere core.

This Kid has far more creativity by market research than soul. It's packed to the rafters with plot (at least 20 to 30 minutes too much plot), and the requisite gaffes that will have most audiences rolling their eyes (yes, the idea that "All Chinese know kung fu" is here).

Director Harald Zwart is best known for his dreadful Pink Panther remake, and here adds about as many fresh ideas to the story as ... well he and writer Christopher Murphey add none, unless you include some trite life lessons as misguided as anything in Twilight. It's also far more brutal than original.

But Kid isn't about cutting edge narrative or themes. It is an easy crowd-pleaser (the box office is evidence of that) with rousing fights, simplistic morals and clearly drawn good guys and bad guys - despite the most fundamental flaws: John Avildsen directed the first Kid and he knows a thing or two about underdog fight movies (he won an Oscar for Rocky). It is here that Smith's so-called character flaws come into play: Macchio seemed vulnerable, Smith never does. For that matter, Chan, unlike Morita, doesn't surprise us one bit when he opens up a can of whup-ass on the bullies.

And for his confidence, Smith is being punished by the court of public opinion.

That he got the part because of daddy is no secret, and it's not even that great a crime. It's a movie role - not public office. All the performances in Kid are rickety - particularly when it comes to pre-adolescent romance - and Chan not given nearly enough to do. But it's hard to argue that Smith doesn't have a bright future ahead of him, regardless of his "inappropriate" cockiness and wisdom beyond his years. He grew up in Hollywood: he should be commended for having a brain of his own that he's willing to exercise.

The Karate Kid opened in Hong Kong Thursday.

(HK Edition 08/07/2010 page4)