I was only six years old when The Karate Kid hit the screens in 1984...but I was old enough to know that it was bigger than Bigfoot (the monster truck...not the dude from Harry and the Hendersons). I don’t have any sort of official facts and figures in front of me but I’m gonna go ahead and say that a lot of karate studio owners across the US probably retired off of the Karate Kid-based cash windfall they saw in the mid to late 80’s. I can tell you that this reviewer personally signed up at three different Worcester-based karate studios in 1986. Dude got himself a Gi and a white belt and ended his karate career with that very same white belt about a month later. I was an unbearable little shit, man. I remember the instructor trying to teach us something called the “thrust punch” on day one and I was all like “eff that noise...when we gonna learn that sick ass crane move..HiYAH!...YAH!...YAH!” When the instructor explained that this isn’t how real karate works I got all pissed off and bought a bunch of Very Fine grape juice from the vending machine in the lobby and hid in the mop closet until my mom came to get me. Poor lady...dropping all of her hard earned cash to pick up a kid with a purple mouth, a white belt, and no karate skills whatsoever.
The Karate Kid Part II followed in 1986. I saw it on the last day of the 2nd grade and proceeded to come down with a severe, summer-destroying case of the chickenpox about halfway through said flick. I tell this story a lot...even though it doesn’t really have anything to go with anything. I’m just still sore about 34 years later is all! Part II is a decent enough film that gets kicked up a notch or two by the inclusion of the Peter Cetera tune “Glory of Love”...possibly the greatest song to have even been featured in a motion picture...ever. The Karate Kid Part III finally dropped in June of 1989...in the middle of one of the fiercest summer movie line-ups in the history of summer movies (Batman...Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...Parenthood...Uncle Buck...shit, Do the Right Thing!). I went to see it with my dad and we both absolutely fucking hated it. Like, the one positive thing I could say was that I made it to the closing credits without a chickenpox outbreak. I hated it so much that I have vehemently avoided any and all Karate Kid-related releases over the last 31 years. I mean...I DID audition to be an extra in the the sequel where 6-time Oscar winner Hillary Swank plays the karate kid...but they passed me over...so hell if I’m gonna watch THAT shit (unlike the film School Ties...where I AM featured as an extra...and which I still watch repeatedly). The reboot with Will Smith’s kid? Hard pass. The new YouTube series Cobra Kai with most of the original cast? Maybe if they release it on VHS I might be inclined to take a peek. The sour taste of Part III never really faded from memory. Remember when you heard Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” and thought “I guess I don’t need to ever listen to another Weezer album?” So it was with Karate Kid III and me.
Someone suggested I revisit KK III for VHS of the Week so that’s exactly what I did. I can tell you right off the top that the first 10 minutes are easily the best part of the film as the first 10 minutes are a montage of scenes from the first Karate Kid. I mean...I understand that a little refresher course might be necessary once in a while...but The Karate Kid ain’t exactly Mulholland Drive The kid fights...he wins. Wash, rinse, and repeat. In case you somehow have no idea what I’m talking about I’ll provide my own 30 second recap: The kid Danny LaRusso (Ralphie Macchio) and his moms move from New Jersey to LA, where the kid immediately runs afoul a gang of local karate kids and their Evil Sensei (Kreese), who operate out of the Cobra Kai, the most fearsome dojo in all of Sherman Oaks. Daniel gets tuned up a bunch ‘cuz he’s kind of a chump. As luck would have it, though, his building super is a mystical Japanese WWII veteran named Mr Miyagi (Pat Morita) who just so happens to know everything there is to know about karate (and bonsai trees...and butterfly-collared shirts. More on those later). Mr Miyagi is both an extremely important, groundbreaking Japanese American film character...and also a walking fortune cookie. He teaches Daniel the karate and suddenly the kid is the best around...and nothing’s ever gonna bring him down. He defeats all of the Cobra Kai’s at the big All-Valley Karate Tournament and gets to date the babysitter from Adventures in Babysitting. So that’s all well and good. For Part II the brass at Columbia took all that coin they made on the original and sent the cast and crew to Okinawa to act out the exact same story but with a different backdrop (actually, turns out they filmed in Oahu, Hawaii...but who am I to break balls?). Daniel meets a local girl named Kumiko and promises to be the man who will fight for her honor. He’ll be the hero she’s been dreaming of, you dig? The local Okinawan bad guys present a far bigger challenge than the platinum blonde gringos back in the valley...but they prove to be no match for our boy Daniel-San! He wins the climactic showdown yet again. He even has the chance to land a death blow to his opponent but decides to tweak his nose and yell “honk!” instead. I thought this was lame as fucking shit...even when I was 8.
Should you unwisely decide to continue watching Karate Kid III after the first 10 minutes here’s what you’ll see: After the superfluous montage we are reintroduced to the Evil Sensei from Part I. He’s still evil and a Sensei but he’s down on his luck...and it’s tough (ohh so tough). Apparently after the Cobra Kai were embarrassed by Daniel LaRusso at the All-Valley Tournament however many years ago all of his students proceeded to jump ship and his dojo went tits up. He has spent the last few years on skid row, drinking nips of Cutty Sark from the local bodega, telling ‘nam stories to his fellow disgraced evil sensei’s around a barrel fire (note: I may have made all of this up). The Sensei decides he’s sick and tired of being sick and tired so he heads up to a mega mansion in the hills to see his pal “Scary” Terry. This Terry cat is a ponytailed billionaire who smokes cigars in the sauna and practices martial arts to classical music. How/why he has all of this money is never explained. I guess Terry supposedly fought alongside the Evil Sensei in Vietnam...even though the actor who plays him, Thomas Ian Griffith, was born in 1962. That math does NOT check out, dudes. Evil Sensei complains that Daniel LaRusso single handedly destroyed Cobra Kai. Terry promises to single handedly destroy Daniel LaRusso. “I’ll make him suffer!....and suffer!....AND SUFFER SOME MORE!!!” This Griffith guy is like Steven Seagal but with less acting chops. He also offers to send the Evil Sensei on a prostitute-guided tour of Tahiti (seriously) so he won’t have to bear the indignity of acting in Karate Kid Part III.
The Evil Sensei departs from LAX at the very moment Daniel and Mr Miyagi arrive back home from not-Okinawa. Daniel figures he’s gonna move back into his mom’s piece and sign up for college or whatever but they quickly learn that their apartment complex was sold and is in the process of being demolished. They couldn’t have at least texted Miyagi to give him a heads up!? Dude was the SUPER! Mrs. LaRusso has already moved back to NJ to take care of their Uncle Louie, who has come down with a severe case of emphysema. We know he has emphysema because he is onscreen for two minutes and coughs the ENTIRE TIME. I don’t know who the actor who plays Uncle Louis is but...dude...way to spin solid gold out of your two minutes of screen time! Daniel is homeless for about ten seconds but then Miyagi offers to let him move into his dope spot so they can continue to paint fences and eat freshly caught snapper and catch flies with chopsticks.
Daniel might not have much going in the way of plans...but Scary Terry sure has plans for Daniel (mwuh huh huh!!). Terry summons “Karate’s Badboy”...the nefariously named Mike Barnes (shudder)...to a meeting in his bathtub. Seriously, this dude conducts most of his business from the bubble bath...the bubbles obscuring his unmentionables and whatnot. After barking orders like “dump all of our toxic sludge in a river in Borneo! Bribe the DA!” to his secretary he meets with Barnes and his pals Snake and Other Dude Whose Name I Forgot. He tells Barnes he’ll pay him a shit ton of money to beat Daniel at the All-Valley Tournament. Not just beat him, mind you: “make him feel pain and fear and bleed until he howls!” (Note: that quote may not be in exact order). Terry is also going to go undercover as a karate instructor and attempt to create tension between Daniel and Mr Miyagi. If this plot doesn’t make sense to you it’s probably because it is utterly nonsensical. Why would some random billionaire expend so much effort just to seek revenge on a 19 year-old kid?? I mean...why not just have him killed or whatever?? We can blame, say, Caddyshack 2 on the fact that few of the original writers/producers/stars were involved. Karate Kid III was written and directed by the same dudes who made the first two flicks. What the fahhhh, y’all?
Meanwhile back at the Miyagi compound the Mister mentions that he wouldn’t mind opening up a bonsai tree shop but that he doesn’t have the dough. So Daniel, the silly son of a bitch, goes out and spends his entire college tuition to rent the old man a janky ass building near the train tracks in some bumfuck part of pre-gentrification Echo Park. “I already got a name picked out: Mister Miyagi’s Little Trees!” Miyagi is less than pleased but he agrees to bring Daniel on as a partner...mostly because he is the only other person he ever seems to interact with in the entire world. With zero foot traffic and the internet still a decade away? I will give that store two weeks! One morning Daniel and Miyagi are doing their Thai Chi on the cliffs high above the ocean when Miyagi explains that they aren’t selling real deal bonsai trees. That true bonsai trees are extremely rare and that the only known legit bonsai in California is growing on a completely inaccessible cliff in an oceanside ravine called Devil’s Cauldron. He knows this because he’s the one who planted it there. He says it’s worth $80k and TOO BAD NO ONE CAN EVER CLIMB DOWN THERE AND GET IT (WINK).
While the fellas are setting up shop Daniel notices that there’s a pottery store across the street. Hey, throw in a fair-trade coffee shop and you’ve got a hipster enclave. Maybe I was wrong about this neighborhood. Daniel runs over to say hey and immediately sees sparks a flyin’ with Jessica, the store’s proprietor. Within the first one minute of their conversation the fact that Jessica is an expert mountain climber somehow comes up. Do we think this is going to end up having some connection to that expensive bonsai tree on the cliff!??? Lazy fuckin’ screenwriting. Jessica agrees to go on a date with Daniel that very evening...which is cool...but when he shows up to pick her up she tells him she has a boyfriend and just wants to be friends...which is less cool. I initially thought maybe he’s gotta win her over or whatever...but nope...they never even hold hands. I’m thinking...why would they give the hero of the story a love interest that isn’t interested in love?? I mean...it’s a MOVIE! If I want to watch a dude hang around with a girl who has a boyfriend and who just wants to be friends I’ll just watch my own personal memories from high school and college in my own head. I did a little research on this and it turns out Jessica was supposed to be a love interest...but they cast an actress who was only 16...and Ralph Macchio was already TWENTY SEVEN!! Why not just cast someone age appropriate?? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the actress who played Jessica is Blake Lively’s cousin. What’s that? Blake Lively was only 20 months old when this movie came out? Ok so...I don’t know then.
Daniel and Jessica head out on their not-a-date, which is quickly and rudely interrupted by Mike Barnes and his evil henchmen, who are looking to serve up some ice cold chops of the karate variety! They want Daniel to sign a contract agreeing to fight Barnes in the upcoming All-Valley Tourney but Daniel ain’t having it. Mr Miyagi already done told him that they are finished with karate (did I forget to mention that? Ahh...who cares). “Karate in here,” Mr Miyagi says, pointing to his heart, “not HERE” he says, pointing to nowhere in particular. The next day Terry shows up claiming to be the Evil Sensei’s long lost Vietnam buddy. He explains that the Evil Sensei died of a heart attack but that “really, he died of a broken heart”...which is not an actual medical condition. Mr Miyagi is super apologetic because he’s a solid ass dude like that.
Since Mr Miyagi’s Tiny Trees never has a single paying customer Daniel decides he’s gonna do the old man a solid and go rescue that tree at the bottom of Devil’s Cauldron. As luck would have it, his new not-a-girlfriend just so happens to be an expert climber because OF COURSE SHE IS!!! While they are walking along the cliffs Daniel explains that he wants to give the tree to Miyagi because it’s worth $10k and he thinks that’s enough dough to make the old man comfortable for the rest of his life. First off--didn’t you JUST say the tree was worth $80k like five scenes ago? And I don’t know how much ten thousand dollars was in 1989 money but I’m pretty sure it was not very much. Maybe enough to buy a used VW Cabriolet with a busted tranny and not much else. Anyway, they get to the cliffs and start to climb down and Daniel almost falls to his death because he pretty much sucks at everything except for that one crane move from Part I. His not-a-gal-pal straightens him out and they find the tree and Daniel gushes “It’s perfect! It’s like the tree on my Gi!” They yank it out of the ground and immediately drop it into the ocean below...which is no bueno because I guess salt water is wicked bad for bonsai trees? Hell if I know, dude--everything I know about bonsai trees comes from these first three Karate Kid movies. I mean...if y’all say so. They climb to the bottom and rescue the tree but...OH SHIT...Mike Barnes and his bros materialize at the top of the Cauldron and yank up their climbing ropes! They holler down and tell Daniel that if he doesn’t sign the contract agreeing to fight in the tournament they are going to leave him to drown at the bottom of the ravine. You know...I’m not the best judge of distance but I’m gonna go ahead and say that it’s at least a half a mile from the top of the ravine to the bottom. The chances that Daniel would be able to carry on a conversation with dudes at the top of the Devil’s Cauldron? Less than zero chances. They lower down the contract (and, conveniently enough, a pen) and Daniel signs it and the bad guys lower the ropes and save Daniel and Jessica from certain death. They still make fun of him a ton though (“You’re pretty heavy for a WIMP!”) and they make a couple of cracks about raping Jessica...which is totally no biggie for a PG-rated flick in 1989. GAH! When they reach the top of the hill Mike Barnes takes the real deal bonsai tree and snaps it in half...‘cuz he’s 100% that dick. Ten to eighty thousand dollars...up in smoke!
Daniel rushes the busted-ass tree home to Miyagi, who is predictably unenthused that Daniel let a bunch of karate hooligans snap his prized tree in half. He takes it stride though, ‘cuz nothing rattles that old motherfucker. Miyagi says he’ll deal with the tree but he still won’t help Daniel train for the tournament. Daniel is all “C’mahhhn Mister Miyagi! I wanna sweep the leg! I want to put ‘em in a body bag!” Miyagi is all “that “wax on wax off” shit is soooo 1984!” Daniel is left with no choice but to enter the lion’s den and train with Terry at the former Cobra Kai headquarters. Of course, Terry is a double agent...so right off the bat he’s got Daniel doing some stupid shit. Terry makes Daniel kick a wooden beam until his foot swells up like a bulls bollocks while he hides around the corner and laughs maniacally. Daniel arrives home all busted up and sore and Miyagi is all “boy, you better put that foot in some Epsom Salt!” Daniel tells Miyagi off and makes him cry and you know what?? Why am I, or anyone else, rooting for Daniel LaRusso? I mean, he’s kind of a punk...and he’s mean! And he looks like he’s been hanging out at the Tunnel with Leo and Tobey and the P-word Posse. He doesn’t look like he could beat a parking ticket...let alone “Karate’s Bad Boy”.
Daniel starts to get super aggro...probably as a result of being forced to punch walls all day long. He takes Jessica out to a juice club for her last night in town but Terry slips some dude a finner to hit on her and Daniel promptly breaks the dude’s nose. If she wasn’t interested in dating him before she is REALLY not interested in dating him now. He apologizes...but she leaves the movie anyway. Forever. 86 Jessica. Daniel has a moment of clarity or whatever and realizes that he’s becoming a bigger asshole than he already is. He decides he’s gonna tell Terry he can’t train with him anymore...but when he arrives at the Cobra Kai Dojo Terry reveals his true self (ohhhhh!!!!). He tells Daniel he has to fight or he’s gonna...you know...kill him or something. Daniel starts to run out of the dojo and JUST as he’s about to run by a cardboard cutout of the Evil Sensei the ACTUAL Evil Sensei pops out from behind the cardboard cutout...of himself. Dude is back from his Tahitian hooker bender and is ready to smoke ass! Daniel is pretty well hemmed up but then Mister Miyagi busts up in the joint and beats the shit out of everyone in sight. Like...no one even lands a single punch on the dude! Not one! And I know Pat Morita was only 57 when they filmed this flick...but he looks about 77. If he’s so invincible why doesn’t HE sign up for the tournament, aye? Speaking of the tournament, Miyagi is now fully back on team Daniel-San. He’s all “more like wax off, wax ON, motherfucker!!”
So Miyagi decides to help Daniel train. There’s a training montage but it’s only like three minutes long...prolly because this movie is already like FIVE HOURS long! They practice all of their signature moves. They also scale their way back down into the Devil’s Cauldron to return the rehabbed bonsai tree to that inaccessible cliff for reasons that are unclear. Don’t they want between ten to eighty grand?? So tournament day finally rolls around and the Cobra Kai crew are JACKED UP! They are yelling shit like “when we finish with him his own mother won’t recognize him!!” God...DAMN...dudes! In the earlier films there was some sort of build up to the final fight. Here, they don’t even bother. The entire climax lasts about three minutes and the suspense-o-meter stays pinned at zero. We skip right ahead to the fight between Daniel and Mike Barnes....and it’s a dirty one! Mike Barnes punches Daniel in the face/head/neck/crotch area. The referee keeps threatening to disqualify him but does not do so. Terry and the Evil Sensei want Mike Barnes to keep the score at 0-0 and the defeat Daniel with a death blow in sudden death overtime. And if you understand how the scoring works at these karate events the you know more than I know. Daniel is getting beaten like a rented donkey and he’s writhing in pain on the floor...crying. The ref calls time and Miyagi rushes out to chat with him...butterfly collar a-blazin’. “I don’t want to fight this guy, Mr Miyagi! I’m afraid of him!” Miyagi reminds him that he can’t lose because, once again, “karate in here...not out there!” So why not hop on the bad foot and do the good thing then? Daniel peels himself off the floor for overtime. Mike Barnes comes charging after him but Daniel flips him to the floor in the saddest, sorryest, anti-climatic climactic move of all time. I guess the point is there are no points so, in scoring one point, Daniel has all of the points and wins the tournament. Again. And like Part’s I &II before Part III ends immediately with an abrupt freeze frame. And so does this review. The end