Retro Review Karate Kid

There have been a lot of Karate Kid references on television lately. In "How I met your mother", Barney states his preference on who to root for in the movie, "Reaper" used the song played at the Karate Tournament "You're the best around", and in last week's episode of "chuck", they used the quote "sweep the leg".

I like doing movie reviews, so I thought I'd review some movies from my past and what they meant to me when I saw them. Here goes nothing...


The Karate Kid is in my opinion the quintessential film for anyone whose ever felt like an outcast or an underdog. I think that the real strength of this film is it's amazing chemistry between Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio as well as it's even handed pace. There is a great amount of exposition and story that gradually lead you into the plot. Most films today I find try to rush through this part of the underdog story to focus more on the "training" or other parts of the story. Daniel (Ralph Macchio in his first role) is a total fish out of water in the beginning. The film really sets up the world in which Daniel literally cannot catch a break. The girl he likes has an insane ex, who then targets Daniel with his friends who all take Karate together at an overly-aggressively minded dojo. After several beatings which escalate in severity, the kindly old man who had been known only to Daniel as his apartment complex's handyman reveals himself to be a Martial arts master when he saves Daniel's life on Halloween. Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi in this film has such a presence onscreen that he immediately steals any scene which he is in. Mr. Miyagi works a deal with the head of the Karate dojo. His students are not to touch Daniel for two months, and have all of them meet in the "neutral ground" of the ring at the national tournament in December. Thus begins Daniel's very unconventional training. The training, and the sequence at the tournament lives on in cinema history as just some of those moments that every kid in the 80's remembers.


My personal reaction: Personally, the Karate kid was a favorite movie of mine when I was a kid. I taped it off of HBO when I was 6 or so, and I always watched that movie over and over and over again. This was probably because I was bullied much like Daniel in my youth. The wisdom of "Wax on, Wax off" and the hidden fury of the "Crane Kick" are just the type of things that stick with you. I don't know about anyone else, but I could always care less about the romance element. I know that it starts the plot in motion and everything, and it needed telling, but I think this whole film is about Miyagi. Since the first moment you see him, you just want to know more about this guy, and the Romance parts of the film just start to get in the way. There is conflict which seems there simply for the sake of conflict, and which is resolved far too quickly in my opinion. But the father/teacher and son/student relationship that the two main leads have is really the heart of the film, and truly make it shine. Looking at it with adult eyes, I can see why Ralph Macchio said that the schedule remake of the Karate Kid will suffer because no one can replace Pat Morita as Miyagi. I can definitely see his point here. So i don't know if this review was informative, entertaining, or whatever, but it was fun. So Karate kid is definitely recommended, and if you haven't seen it, treat yourself to an 80's classic tonight.

Rating out of 10: 8.5