The Karate Kid movies have been a part of cinema for so long that the fact that it all began as a Rocky rip-off has been mostly forgotten. The first three entries were even directed by the filmmaker who launched the original Rocky, John G. Avildsen; like the Rocky and Star Wars and James Bond and Alien movies, they mastered the trick of giving audiences the same thing, but different. Most of the movies began with the protagonist moving from a familiar place to an unfamiliar one, then showed them becoming smitten with a local girl, getting harassed by a bully who knows karate, being trained as a fighter by a wise and caring mentor, and entering a tournament to kick the bully’s butt and use the prize money to do something idealistic.

Karate Kid: Legends, the sixth entry in the series, gives its intended audience – which is to say, anyone who enjoyed any part of the other movies – a grab bag containing all of those elements (including a mentor role for the original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio), plus more bits culled from all five films plus the spinoff series Cobra Kai. The script tries to unify the franchise by referencing every previous entry and binding them together with a new bit of information that might raise one or both of your eyebrows. However, Karate Kid: Legends ends up seeming overstuffed and impatient; there are too many major characters, and the movie is so determined to keep the running time as short as possible that it can’t give any one character the attention they need to really pop.

The lone exception is our hero, Li Fong (Ben Wang). Li is a teenager who moved from Beijing to New York City’s Chinatown because his doctor mom (Ming-Na Wen) got hired by a Manhattan hospital. Li is a character we haven’t seen before. There are early scenes at kung fu school where we see him being mentored by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan), who replaced the late Pat Morita’s mentor character Mr. Miyagi in the 2010 reboot The Karate Kid (the one where the young hero and his mom left Detroit for Beijing so she could work at a car factory). Li is so acrobatic, funny, and touching that he deserves an action movie that’s entirely his.

Li’s Achilles’ heel is his paralysis during life-or-death moments: A manifestation of PTSD from the death of his older brother, a kung fu student who won a tournament and was ambushed and murdered by his opponent while walking home with Li. If you’ve ever seen a movie, you’ll know that the point of introducing a problem like that is to set up the moment when the hero overcomes it.

Like every protagonist before him, Li gets bullied by bratty thugs. They train at a dojo near his school. Their leader is karate prodigy Connor Day (Aramis Knight), two-time winner of the Five Boroughs tournament. Li’s school also happens to be near an independent pizzeria owned by former boxer Victor Lipani (Joshua Jackson, who has aged into a character actor with gravitas and a warm smile). Victor’s charming and witty teenage daughter Mia (Sadie Stanley) works the cash register. She and Li hit it off. Of course, Mia was once Connor’s girlfriend. Connor’s father, who owns the dojo, is a mob-connected underworld figure who loaned Victor the money to open the pizzeria and expects to be paid back soon.

That’s a lot of connections and coincidences, and the movie is just getting warmed up. The film is also connected to a long tradition of urban melodramas in which young people hone a skill (sometimes dancing, sometimes singing, sometimes fighting) to win a contest and use the prize money to rescue a financially imperiled person or institution (a dance studio, a recreation center, a grandma). So Li trains to beat Connor in the Five Boroughs tournament so he can pay off Victor’s debt and prevent his girlfriend from having to leave New York City. Enter Mr. Han, and also, for some reason, Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso, who rolls into the story a week before the Five Boroughs championship.

The movie is so relentless in its desire to pull everything together and not leave any threads dangling that it sprints through scenes where you might’ve wanted it to linger, rushes through the final tournament, and rarely gives any character or subplot its full attention. (At 90 minutes, it’s a rare sequel that could’ve benefited from being longer.) This is especially regrettable considering the quality of the main performances. Chan and Macchio banter and bicker like brothers and throw themselves into fight scenes, training montages, and slapstick. Wen does a lot with a little as Li’s mom. Stanley is so charming and earnest that she makes us believe every word Mia says, including lines that amount to the filmmakers begging us to accept something they know needed more work. Knight is a memorable bad guy, an angry young prince who can sneer with his eyes.

Yes, there is an incredibly difficult finishing move. Every Karate Kid movie has one. When Li decides the time is right to use his, you would cheer like everyone else. There’s a reason why this tale keeps getting retold: it’s foolproof.