Cheese Factor is a column that showcases the worst, cheesiest and corniest films in cinema history. Today, I review Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, a pretty corny 80s Karate Kid meets James Bond kinda flick.

Soooo…anyone remember this one? I think I bought it out of the cheap-o bin at the supermarket some day ago. I remember saying, “Oh yeah! I remember this movie, I think it’s good”. I slapped my $3.99 in the clerk’s face and ran the disc home!

Ohhhh…wait a minute, this movie isn’t cool! It’s just a rehash of a bunch of movies that actually do a good job at what they’re trying to accomplish. This one just comes off stale, tired and boring. The only thing it has going for it is some clever lines from the old Asian guy. Quotes I actually still use today…surprisingly.

So, without spoiling too much of the plot: Fred Ward is Remo Williams a 40 something cop who’s death is faked so that the Quaker Oat Man (Wilford Brimley) can recruit him into a 3-man super secret government agency that does the President’s dirty work. Or something like that.

But, before Remo can get killing or whatever he’s going to be doing, he has to get fixed up by the wise Chiun, a Korean martial arts master. This is probably the best part of the film. It is remeniscent of a Karate Kid (or Kickboxer) kind of sequence where the older martial arts expert trains the younger, naive sloppy student.

J.A. Preston and Chiun (Joel Grey) in the Big Pimp

Something I couldn’t get my head around after watching this again recently is that Fred Ward is in his 40s yet we’re supposed to believe that Chiun is going to mold him into some kind of ultimate bad ass in an extremely short amount of time. The film even pokes fun at this concept, which Chiun saying that he’ll be ready in 15 years.

So, I have to argue that if Remo was worth faking his death because he was good enough to be in this organization, but they thought that he should be fixed up by Chiun, but Chiun doesn’t think he’ll be ready for 15 years, then why would they even waste time on the Karate Kid sequence? There’s a reason why Bruce Lee started training when he was a kid. That’s why he WAS AN ULTIMATE BADASS. But I’ll never believe Fred Ward is after a few weeks (days??) of training.

The supporting cast is unremarkable: Wilford Brimley’s scenes consist of him sitting in front of a “high tech” computer the entire time. J.A. Preston has a wooden arm and the supposed love interest Kate Mulgrew chews scenes defying the stereotypical male archtypes that suggest she’s a woman and shouldn’t be playing soldiers. The villain is so boring I don’t even remember his name.

To wrap this up, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, which title suggests that this was going to be a franchise launcher (hold your snickers to yourself!), is a pretty dull flick. If you have some beer or cocktails up in you, you might consider this at 3 a.m. if nothing else is on. That or channel surf for some Girls Gone Wild commercials, those might actually be more entertaining.