Karate Kid: Os Campeões

Karate Kid: Legends is actually an enjoyable little film.

I love the Kung Fu Karate training and fight scenes, and the whole thing, and this is true of the series, is played with an air of wholesomeness that's fairly irresistible. I came out with a spring on my step and... I cried.

I can't imagine anyone remembering Karate Kid: Legends four decades from now. Or next week.

The "Legends" are let downs. All the film's got going for it is Wang.

There's no room for this sixth chapter in the series to breathe, characters are one-dimensional archetypes, and everything has to be explicitly spelled out via unnecessary expository avalanches. This latest installment is a true waste of time.

We're in familiar but not unwelcome territory....No surprises here, but sometimes that's just fine.

The problem with "Karate Kid: Legends" is right there in the title: "legends," as in multiple. Many beloved "Karate Kid" characters and icons of millennial sports movies enter the ring, but in the ensuing melee, no one emerges victorious.

The film struggles tonally, thanks in part to the upbeat music set against a backdrop of violence and trauma.

Instead, it's more like an outline whose details the filmmakers never got around to filling in.

Hardcore fans may get their kicks from seeing Macchio and Chan together. Everyone else will just feel like tempted to sweep the legs of everyone trying to cash in on a recently revived franchise and wring it dry.

"Karate Kid: Legends" is steeped in nostalgia, which helps paper over a formulaic script and the strange reality that its domestic scenes are more effective than its fight action.

There is at once a roughshod, zippy energy coupled with a sedateness here that results from the simple fact that the film never quite knows how to square the pure awkwardness of two teachers instructing a karate kid at once.

"Karate Kid: Legends" combines the best of all those sequels plus a 2010 remake to contribute a new and worthy chapter to the canon.

Kids may come out of Karate Kid: Legends crane-kicking in excitement from the handful of fights, and older fans can relish the nostalgia, but for everyone else it's wax on, nod off.

"Legends" tells a new story but leans on those pre-existing properties to provide an emotional payoff, and while it's harmless, it's as soulless as a quarterly earnings report.

Impressive and exasperating in its determination to squeeze every previous iteration of this story into one huge glimmering chunk of lore.

But if this film is any indication of the quality of this season's movies, I must quote the Bananarama hit from the original movie: it's going to be a "cruel, cruel summer."

An easy, breezy and mostly enjoyable entry in the long-running franchise.

has none of the first movie's originality

The film represents a figurative and literal change of pace for the series.