#128: Sidekicks
Release Date: April 9th, 1992
Format: Streaming (Tubi)
Written by: Lou Illar and Galen Thompson
Directed by: Aaron Norris
2 Stars
If you’ve never heard of Sidekicks, it’s essentially a Chuck Norris vanity project, funded by the wealthy Houston mattress salesman, Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, that basically combines The Karate Kid with “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.”
It’s a story about a fanciful, asthmatic teenage boy who chronically daydreams of being a brave martial arts warrior, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Chuck Norris. In reality, he is bullied and struggling in school.
I have two opposing views of this movie:
1. This is a bad movie, and especially embarrassing for Chuck Norris. This is how he views himself? A better movie would have the Jonathan Brandis character worshipping Chuck Norris, only to have Chuck tell him when they meet that it’s a lot of movie magic, and that he can be special in his own way. Nope! Real-life Chuck Norris is just as bad ass as fantasy Chuck Norris, and encourages our main character to be just like him. It’s also a marginally racist movie (I’ll say marginal, since it was 1992). We have a daydream scene of Joe Piscopo in Asian-face doing a full evil Vietcong act that’s a tough slog (although I actually really like Piscopo in the rest of the movie), and although there is Asian representation in the cast, we have a Japanese actor (Miko) and an actor of Singaporean descent (Julia Nickson-Soul) running a family Chinese restaurant and teaching the Brandis character some indeterminate form of martial arts. And in regards to the plot, I can’t underemphasize just how much it blatantly takes from The Karate Kid.
or
2. This is a movie that works really well for its target audience of 5-12 year-old boys, that teaches them that exercise, diet, and discipline can make them strong and healthy, and there’s lots of kicking and punching and gun fights to keep them entertained along the way. It’s also surprisingly well-photographed at times, and the performances of Brandis, Norris, Piscopo, Nickson-Soul, Beau Bridges, and Mako, especially, are quite strong.
As I sat wrestling with how to interpret this sort of ridiculous vanity project from the early ‘90s, I couldn’t help but feel kind of warm to it. There is something here.
It might be seeing Jonathan Brandis and thinking how sad it is that he never found himself in a profession where I think he had real potential. He committed suicide at age 27. Here, he is wonderful. He had such a unique look and gentle disposition. I think he was the best child actor of the ‘90s.
But beyond the bittersweet sentiment of seeing him on screen, I think Sidekicks is exactly what it set out to be: a fun fantasy for young boys who were too young for The Karate Kid on the first go-around.
