Future Shock

Even as the world has not quite gotten over Shyamalan-bashing, Shyamalan himself has moved on to a reasonably good piece of work in After Earth. The Pursuit of Happyness showed the intense father-son pairing of Will Smith and Jaden Smith. After Earth takes us to the same pairing. A spaceship carying the duo crash-lands on a (now abandoned by humans) Earth. With lead Will Smith (Cypher Paige) incapacitated, son Jaden Smith (Kitai Paige) is entrusted with a perilous mission to cross a hundred kilometers of hostile terrain to activate an emergency beacon. With an Earth that is perhaps labeled a tad more hostile than the way it has evolved, and friends and enemies alike in nature, Kitai has to battle a plethora of calamities and a paucity of resources, and draws upon generous doses of inspirational pep talk to get to his objective. A movie that has, at the time of writing, faced the harshness of (clearly undeserved) extreme reviews

13/20

Bringing Kung Fu to Beijing

Within the genre of sports movies, no sports seem to be more evocative than football, and martial arts. While the former is about relentless pursuit of personal excellence coupled with teamwork, the latter is about technical brilliance honed to a startling degree at an individual level. When Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) makes his way to Beiging with single mom Sherry, leaving behind the wasteland of Detroit’s auto industry, he has to contend with physical aggression and hostility from his peer group. Enter Mr Han (Jackie Chan), the repairman with a history and no ordinary skills in kung fu. With training that encompasses chi, the art of learning through repetition, and a healthy dose on Chinese culture and values, The Karate Kid (2010) shows how a physically weak American kid uses kung fu (and not karate, which really is a serious turn-off) to find his way in his new world. Strictly a family entertainer, with action to entertain and truisms to ponder over

12/20