Back in the 1990s Chuck Norris took a stab at his own version of The Karate Kid with his film Sidekicks. Nowadays it may seem a bit far-fetched that Chuck Norris would have an entire film basically dedicated to how cool he is, especially when one of his big legacies is a series of silly memes about how much of a badass he is. It retroactively could make 1992's Sidekicks sound like a joke or a made-up movie, but not only does it exist, it was a modest success upon release too.
Prior to the movie's arrival, Norris was a pretty well-known martial artist and actor, though he was quite never an A-lister like Schwarzenegger or Stallone. Throughout the 1980s he starred in a bunch of action vehicles like The Delta Force or Code Of Silence that turned profits on modest budgets. Norris even had a cartoon series during the late 1980s and his own anti-drug PSAs, and he was able to convince a Houston furniture salesman to invest 8 million dollars into making Sidekicks.
The film itself is pretty straightforward since it's essentially a riff on the Karate Kid formula. It follows a young boy named Barry who's a loner and often daydreams about himself in different action movies. He never pictures himself as the hero, but as the sidekick to Norris, whom he idolizes. Barry tries to learn martial arts but is rejected by the dojo his bullies train in and is instead taught by the friendly Mr. Lee (Mako), a clear Mr. Miyagi stand-in. Lee trains Barry with unconventional methods and eventually, he joins a big karate tournament where he faces off against his bullies and wins the whole thing in a dramatic finish. He even gets to meet the real Chuck Norris too, who shows up at the tournament and joins his team.
Sidekicks itself seems to idolize Chuck Norris almost as much as Barry does, which comes off as an excise in vanity considering the star was an executive producer and his younger brother Aaron directed it. The movie essentially tells the same story as Karate Kid, with the key difference being that Chuck Norris shows up every once in a while for a hero-worshipping daydream or to offer Barry words of wisdom. What's interesting about Sidekicks is not only that it was a rip-off of an older movie, but less than a year later another film would arrive that had some of the same ideas.
Last Action Hero (directed by John McTiernan of Die Hard fame) is about a young boy who idolizes an action movie star and then finds himself transported into said star's movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a parody of himself and while the movie has its problems, on the whole, the execution makes it way more fun than Sidekicks was. Sidekicks wasn't a blockbuster hit but it was a solid success, and Chuck Norris would go on to star in his long-running TV show Walker, Texas Ranger the following year. Sidekicks remains a strange monument to the actor's heyday that is worth checking out as a bizarre curio.