Entertainment : Don\'t let the name fool you: Karate Kid is about much more than action, teenager

There were two reasons I was not looking forward to seeing "Karate Kid" at the Palace — the two words in the title.

Among my least favorite movies are action movies, and movies about teenagers.

Maybe it's because I have had teenagers living in my house since 2001, and I have 10 more years of it to look forward to. Just about every thing you would see on the screen I see (and hear) enough of at home.

And action movies, to me, seem to have the same plot: Good guy chases bad guy. Good guy catches bad guy. They fight. Bad Guy almost wins. Good Guy makes big comeback, and kisses the girl. The end. BORING!

So, with "Karate Kid," I was almost expecting a cross between boring action and the annoying teenage conversation.

I was wrong.

"Karate Kid," is as good as you would expect it to be once you learn it's produced by Will Smith.

But it has nothing to do with karate.

Dre Parker, age 12, has recently buried his father. His mother works for a Detroit auto company that transfers her to China.

Dre quickly learns in China that he does not fit in. To make matters worse, a gang of Kung-fu students taught by an evil instructor rules the school. This group of boys learns that Kung-fu means "no pain" and "no mercy."

Before Dre can learn his first Chinese word, his friendship/first love with Mei Ling — a violin-playing young girl — gets him in trouble with that gang. He gets a black eye and a warning — "Stay away from us all."

The maintenance man in Dre's building is Mr. Chan, played by Jackie Chan. (As much as I liked "Karate Kid," which borrowed its title from a 1984 movie, I have to also observe that originality with names is not its strongest asset.)

If you read anything about "Karate Kid," you've read about how Jackie Chan plays the role of a maintenance man with hidden skills and a hidden heartache incredibly well. Those critics are right. Jackie Chan as Mr. Chan, helps Dre make temporary peace with the gang — but only by agreeing to fight them all, one-by-one, in a Kung-fu contest.

Thus begins a journey of teaching and learning — which begins with a slowly-learned lesson on how to property hang up a jacket.

"Kung Fu affects everything you do," explains Mr. Chan.

The lessons take place in Mr. Chan's living room, where he is working on a car, and then on the Great Wall of China, where the most difficult lessons await. Along the way Mr. Chan has to teach Dre that Kung-Fu is not about dominating your enemies; it's about making peace with them.

Along the way, both the teacher and student end up learning life-changing lessons.

The ending is not surprising, but it's inspiring, and very much worth seeing.

My favorite part: The end of the movie, when the bad guy loses, and the good guy wins — but in the best way possible.

Why you should go: The past and the future meet when Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith (Will Smith's son, of course) work together. And we get a new glimpse into what we hope will be the future of Jackie Chan — something deeper than "Rush Hour" or "Shanghai Knights," roles that show that Jackie Chan is an incredible actor, and not merely a stunt man with an iconic accent. I watched the movie from the back of the theater on a Saturday afternoon, after spending the morning at the fair. I was not really in a movie-watching mood when I arrived at the Palace, but a movie that good soon changes a mood like that.

What you should know before you go: The movie is more than two hours long, so if you are the wiggly type of person who drives people crazy because you cannot sit still (like I am), you may want go to this movie alone. Like I did. It's rated PG, mostly because of the violence (the evil Kung-Fu teacher seems to have learned from the WWF) and also because of the word Dre uses to explain how thoroughly he was beaten up.