User reviews

Well, I have to say that I wasn't really harboring much of any expectations to this 2015 movie "The Martial Arts Kid", as I happened to stumble upon it here in 2023. In fact, I had never actually heard about the movie prior to getting the chance to watch it. And with it being a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to watch it.

I have to be honest that I was figuring "The Martial Arts Kid" to be a knock-off of the 1984 movie "Karate Kid". And it definitely is in the same league as "Karate Kid" no doubt about it, and yeah it is heavily influenced by it, I would say. And there was even a nice nod towards the 'wax on, wax off' sequence in "Karate Kid" as well, which brought me to laughing.

The storyline in "The Martial Arts Kid", as written by writers Michael Baumgarten and Adam W. Marsh, is pretty straight forward, which makes for an easy viewing experience. This wasn't exactly rocket science, nor was I expecting it to be. The storyline is straight forward, but rather similar to the 1984 movie "Karate Kid".

The acting performances in the movie were for the majority adequate. There were some rather toe-curling performances throughout the course of the movie. But I will say that most of the cast did perform well enough. The movie has Don Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock on the cast list, so there is something for us that grew up watching martial arts movies in the 1980s and 1990s.

With "The Martial Arts Kid" being a martial arts movie, of course you will have lots of martial arts fight scenes, duh. And most of these scenes and sequences were actually nicely performed and looked good on the screen. But then there was that cringeworthy fight scene between the two dojos. Ugh, that was just painful to watch.

All in all, then director Michael Baumgarten delivered a watchable enough movie, though it is lacking in originality. If you enjoy martial arts movies, especially those from the 1980s and 1990s, then give "The Martial Arts Kid" a chance.

My rating of "The Martial Arts Kid" lands on a five out of ten stars.

Family-friendly martial arts films seem to be making a slow comeback, THE MARTIAL ARTS KID among them. This isn't an action movie, but a coming-of-age drama with a martial arts backdrop. Like most intentionally "wholesome" movies, it provides plenty of opportunities for eye-rolling , but it's also charming in key moments and actually features some good fight scenes.

The story: A troubled teen (Jansen Panettiere) is sent to live with relatives in Florida, where the guidance and tutelage of his martial arts-practicing uncle (Don Wilson) and aunt (Cynthia Rothrock) help him overcome bullying and gain the confidence to turn his life around.

The film focuses on drama and character development, in which regard it's a mixed bag. Though it addresses real-world problems, this is not a very realistic movie: to keep the relationships between the good guys as healthy as possible, the producers avoid nuance and grit to the point that they make THE KARATE KID seem like a hardcore drama. Nevertheless, this is part of the movie's charm, and it's kind of refreshing to see characters embrace goodness with such gusto. Wilson and Rothrock are clearly into their mentor roles, and while some of Panettiere's scenes can be pretty cringe-worthy, most of his shortcomings are the fault of the script and he remains a likable hero.

The martial arts are afforded a lot of reverence, with the filmmakers going out of their way to present a realistic picture of the hero's development. It gets a little preachy, and MMA fans may not appreciate the portrayal of "practical" fighting as a means of bullying, but I think the movie gets its point across. (It could have managed this even without the endless parade of cameos from real-life practitioners, but oh well.) Also, while the seven full-length fight scenes aren't the centerpiece of the picture, their quality exceeded my expectations. Panettiere's a good little fighter with potential, but I was more appreciative of the comebacks staged by his costars. Rothrock has a pretty good match with taekwondo champ Inga Van Ardenn, while Wilson has arguably the best fight of his career against T.J. Storm. They're not the best fights you'll see this year, but definitely not the worst.

I'm not sure whether Wilson & Co. can get through their remaining careers doing crowd-funded family flicks, but at least in this case, the picture was worth it. While not timeless, it's a fun movie that may encourage an interest in martial arts among younger viewers. Treat it as a rental, but don't be terribly surprised if this inspires a purchase.

This movie was bad even at made for TV standards. The acting is atrocious, the story line predictable and every single character lacks substance.

Awful acting, rip-off story of Karate Kid, poor direction. Your eyes and ears will burn from the crappiness of this "film" Give it a HUGE skip.

Honoring the Past, Embracing the Future Is The Martial Arts Kid a knockdown, drag-out fight flick in which Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock lay waste to gang bangers and drug dealers? Nope. It's more accurate to describe it as a family film in which an ordinary teen discovers the meaning of the martial arts.

However, because I'm a few years past being a teenager, it wasn't the movie's portrayal of the trials and tribulations of teen life in the 21st century that appealed to me most. What I really enjoyed was the way the movie paid homage to the men and women who helped spread the martial arts in America. Both in front of and behind the camera, the stars were out in force.

Wilson and Rothrock may have retired from competition decades ago, but they still can throw down — and they get a few chances to do exactly that. Among other encounters, Wilson takes on martial artist T.J. Storm, and Rothrock dispatches some baddies on the beach. The man who choreographed those close encounters is veteran martial artist, actor and stuntman James Lew, perhaps best known for his work in Big Trouble in Little China.

Another martial arts veteran contributed her expertise to the making of the movie: Cheryl Wheeler served as co-producer. You probably recognize her name. She's a former Black Belt columnist and WKA kickboxing champ who's done stunt work in scores of movies — including fight-doubling for Rene Russo in Lethal Weapon 4, which featured one of my favorite male-on-female fights.

As I mentioned, Wilson and Rothrock are center stage in The Martial Arts Kid, where they're surrogate parents for troubled teen Robbie (Jansen Panettiere). Yes, critics fired a few shots at Wilson and Rothrock's performances in the early years of their acting careers, but their skills have improved substantially. In fact, their scenes with Robbie are among the most engaging parts of the movie.

I also loved the film's nods to history. I'm talking about things like Rothrock's character hailing from Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city where the star actually grew up. And things like the dojo her character co-owns hosting seminars with real martial arts luminaries like Pete "Sugarfoot" Cunningham, Gerry Blanck, Christine Bannon-Rodrigues, Olando Rivera and Jeff Smith. And details like using old competition photos of Rothrock to adorn the walls of said dojo.

The positive messages that run through The Martial Arts Kid make it perfect for youngsters who are in the martial arts, as well as those who should be. But there are plenty of gems that make it fun to watch even if you're a generation removed from that target audience.

— Robert W. Young Editor-in-Chief, Black Belt magazine

This is the most silliness movie ever , acting is very poor and I don't know what were they thinking while filming this nonsense , the only thing that was good is the car *yeah there is a cool car in the movie* apart from that car nothing is worth watching , just some human being with very poor ability to act are jumping and screaming.

Look, it's not that I doubt the sincerity of anyone involved, or of what they brought to the picture. If someone wants to make their own version of a time-honored classic, broadly speaking there's no especial reason why they shouldn't do just that. Tell the stories you want to tell, and have a good time doing it. That generosity of spirit is not applicable across the board, however; I've seen movies from some folks who convinced me in one fell swoop that they should never make movies again. I sat to watch 'The martial arts kid' knowing full well it would be a knock-off of 'The karate kid,' and with very low expectations, but I'll watch pretty much anything, and hey, I'm a fan of at least a couple folks that were involved in this. Unfortunately, it doesn't take long - truly, within the first minutes - to start to make an impression, and it's an emphatically bad one. And that impression sadly only gets worse as the minutes tick by.

From top to bottom this is extraordinarily, painfully, excruciatingly heavy-handed, lacking all tact and nuance, and coming off as extremely forced and artificial as a result. This describes without fail the direction of filmmaker Michael Baumgarten, and every last trace of the screenplay he developed with co-writer Adam W. Marsh. Dialogue, characters, scene writing, plot development, and the narrative generally all suffer from an astounding, bewildering bluntness that fundamentally makes the picture almost impossible to actually enjoy. Case in point, the big showdown between two major supporting characters is inevitable, and gratifying as a rudimentary concept, yet even as it's written in this one instance the scenario is flagrantly overcooked. As another example, a panoply of supporting characters, seemingly portrayed by reputed real life martial artists, get introduced at one point or another - but the inclusions are little more than walk-on parts, cameos, and their involvement (casting and writing alike) comes across as wholly arbitrary, superfluous, and ingenuine. Meanwhile, maybe some day I'll see something else he stars in and my mind will be changed, but it also becomes plainly evident in no time that Jansen Panettiere, portraying protagonist Robbie, possesses acting skills that are meager and wooden. Ordinarily I might chalk up such apparent flaws to poor guidance from the director, and to be sure, I repeat that Baumgarten's contribution is rotten - yet for the fact that other cast members are able to shine through the layers of stiff contrivance to at least some small degree, to inject at least a modicum of earnestness or personality into the proceedings, only accentuates Panettiere's deficiencies.

And about that cast. I feel so bad for Kathryn Newton; I know what she's capable of, and she's forced into a direly small corner here. She tries her best, and for what it's worth she gives the best performance of the whole film, yet nonetheless this might be the worst thing she's ever been involved in. Cynthia Rothrock and Don Wilson I recognize as highly capable martial artists, and though their acting skills aren't up to the same level, at least they're having fun here. Those in smaller supporting parts demonstrate a regrettable range of skill, varying from the genuineness of Newton, to the baseline satisfactory displays from Rothrock and Wilson, to the laughable gaucheness we see from Panettiere. Meanwhile, I know the reputation of James Lew, and the works he has been a part of in the past, yet his choreography of fights in 'The martial arts kid' mostly just feels altogether weak-kneed; only at the climax does it seem like we're getting a more complete image of his capabilities in that regard, or those of the cast in terms of fighting skills. True, one might argue that this is at least in part owing to the more family-friendly nature of the production, tempering the violence - yet the themes this would seem to play with also rather run counter to that subdued slant.

Oh, and here's one more thing - about those themes. It's safe to say that throughout the runtime the screenplay is fostering discrete notions, Big Ideas it wishes to impart about the use of fighting skills, and of violence in daily life. These are nothing special per se, nothing we haven't seen before, but admirable nevertheless. So why in the last twenty minutes or so are those themes willfully abandoned by the filmmakers, and gladly abandoned by the characters that espoused them? I'm hard-pressed in this moment to name another feature that dared to contradict itself, but here we are.

There are, honestly, some good ideas here. There are small flits of cleverness, or some moments are done just well enough by one means or another that I feel like the needle might actually move past "bottom of the barrel." Unfortunately, any time such potential positivity arises, it is surrounded on all sides by far worse and cringe-worthy inclusions. I spent a lot of these 100 minutes just yelling in confounded disbelief at what I was witnessing. One might try to argue in the utmost spirit of magnanimity that this was geared toward kids, so the movie was toned down and simplified for a younger audience. If that's the case, I would counter that kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and this goes too far in that direction in a way that rather talks down to any youthful audience members. (Which again raises the specter of inconsistency where the themes are concerned.) Once more, I commend the sincerity of everyone involved. Sincerity can help a feature to go the extra mile when it otherwise struggles. Sincerity alone can't carry the day, however, and this is flagging and flailing in too many ways to attain real fun. Whatever mild value it has to offer, whatever attractants may have lured one in to check it out, I'm sad to say that 'The martial arts kid' is less a viewing experience than it is a chore. I won't stop anyone from watching it if they like, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't recommend against it.

This film is very entertaining. It is a story that many people will relate to, not just martial arts fans. Although people who are into martial arts will probably relate best to the moves in the film, there are many different things that everyone will relate to and enjoy.

There is a range of genres in Martial Arts Kid. Of course, since the subject is about martial arts, there are some great action-packed scenes. However that isn't the entire story. There is a bit of romance, which plays out smoothly and there is a sense of comedy in a few scenes - not too much to make the film a joke, but not so little that it is too serious.

The story starts when a troublemaker named Robbie moves to a new town to live with his uncle and aunt because his grandmother refuses to deal with him getting in trouble all the time. In this new town he starts getting bullied. At the same time, he decides to start learning martial arts in his uncle's dojo. He learns to fight - not to beat the bully up (and become a bully himself), but to defend and stand up to the bully.

At the beginning, the acting seem a bit fake. The emotions feel forced and, a few times, the dialogue also feels forced. However, later in the film it becomes very natural and smooths out. The film is labeled as a bully film, which I think is a wrong label. It is a nice action- packed film with lots of good messages and morals. But, I don't think it is a bullying film. The story addresses bullying but doesn't really concentrate on it enough to make it a bullying film. Some of the shots are just spot on and perfect.

My favorite scene is when he first learns that his uncle and aunt are martial arts black belts. They are at the beach getting something from the car when a man with a knife comes up to them. Robbie tries to be brave and stand up to him but, when his aunt sees the knife, she does some amazing martial arts moves and takes him down. Robbie just stands there in awe.

This film has a little bit of mature content, mostly when they are fighting. So I recommend it for ages 11 to 18. I give it 4 out of 5 stars because, in the beginning, the acting feels a little fake. However the story is entertaining the whole time and the direction is perfect too.

Reviewed by Gerry O., KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, age 13

I've been a fan of Don "The Dragon" Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock for a long time and when I heard about this film, I was quite excited. They were perfectly cast as Glen and Cindy, a couple who take in troubled nephew Robbie and soon become his mentors in the martial arts when he is bullied.

The film does convey its anti-bullying message, but in a way, the film also changes the way people may perceive martial arts as a whole and that is what also stands out between Wilson's Glen and T.J. Storm's Coach Kaine. Their differences of opinions as to how martial arts should be conveyed is truly personified not only by them but by Robbie and Kaine's student Bo, who is the one who bullies Robbie.

Jansen Panettiere and Matthew Ziff really break out in the film as they did great jobs in their roles of Robbie and Bo respectively. Plus if you are a martial arts fan, you will see most of the cast is comprised of martial artists with some legends of the field and world champions playing themselves as mentors.

This truly is marketed towards the family and speaking not only as a film fan, but as a parent as well, this is one that is suitable for families and is a break away from your generalization of martial arts films. Definitely worth checking out!

These types of movies always make me wonder. First of all you go in to these no names with low expectations so that's a good safe guard. They get so much yet they ruin all their hard work with lazy acting pieces and poor acting cues. So much of this movie was a surprise one min only to be undone by the next scene. Some great training one on one moments with don the dragon Wilson. The lead actor Robbie showed a lot of promise.

THE MARTIAL ARTS KID is a film Produced, and acted by real martial artists. In fact there are more Champions, Grandmasters and Masters in this film than any ever made. Because of this and the fact it is an anti bully themed family film the fighting was purposely made to not appear fancy with wire works and flashy techniques so that fighting would not appear to be pretty or fun. The fighting is more realistic, and the training is the same. Two All Time GREAT martial artists Don The Dragon Wilson and Lady Dragon Cynthia Rothrock are instructors here. Though there is humor and action it is the message that matters here. If you love martial arts then this is the one for you.

Wow, all you really need to sell this movie is to say Don the Dragon Wilson and Cynthia Rothrock star in it, but the move is so much more than a film about great martial artists fighting. There are some exciting fight scenes in it and they play into the message of Anti-Bullying which is the main theme of the movie. This is a fast paced story about a troubled teen who finally grows up with the help of the persistence of family, a girl, traditional values of what martial arts is really about, and it is just a super cool fun family martial arts anti-bullying movie with a message for everyone, young and old alike that everyone who has the privilege of watching will enjoy.

This film helps bring to light bullying. It hs some mature fight scenes and I recomend this film to kids 10 and up. With some of the tradgedies that happen in schools tied to bullying this is a film to watched.