Just got done watching The Karate Kid on TCM. Man, I love ‘80s movies.
I love the audacity of the filmmakers. They took completely implausible plots and made us believe them. I mean, really—a kid moves from New Jersey to LA, gets into trouble with the local martial arts hooligans and an aging maintenance man comes to his rescue, karate chopping him some Cobra Kai butt. When the kid and old man go down to the dogo to try to talk the local sensei into calling off his attack squad, the overly militaristic teacher talks them into entering the All Valley Karate Championship instead. The kid, who has never studied karate a day in his life, trains in the most unconventional manner imaginable—wax on, wax off! sand on, sand off!—and goes on to defeat his nemesis in a black belt competition. Yeah. The kid beat all the other black belts in Los Angeles. With a geed up leg.
Wax on. Wax off.
I know we just started karate lessons and I sound like an insufferable know-it-all, but really, this is just silly. By this logic, if I could get Pat Morita to train Harrison for the next two months, Harrison could win the championship tournament and be the coolest kid in town.
Oh wait. Pat Morita’s dead.
Dang.
Guess we’re going to have to do it the old fashioned way.
All this aside, I really do love this movie. Wonder what Ralph Macchio is up to these days? And Elizabeth Shue?
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