Blast From The Past #1

Today I am adding a new feature called "Blast From The Past" where I will talk about a movie from years ago that I love. 1984 saw a lot of great films released- "Red Dawn", "Purple Rain", "Splash", "The Terminator", among many others. This installment I focus on the 1984 release "The Karate Kid".

I grew up in the 80's, and that decade produced many of my favorite movies and music. This is what I consider to be one of the quintessential 80's movies. "The Karate Kid" was touted as a teenage "Rocky", and that's basically what it is. It helps that it was directed by the same guy who made "Rocky", John G. Avildsen. Although it had many similarities to "Rocky", it was still its own film. The characters are what made this movie rise above the standard underdog story. Ralph Macchio played Daniel Larusso perfectly. The kid taken away from his home and friends to California so his mother can take a job. He has left everything he knows, and you can tell he misses it. Everything just goes wrong for him, and then he meets Mr Miyagi (the great Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita) and finds a friend in him. You can tell that they need each other, Daniel doesn't have a father, Mr Miyagi has no children. They become more than friends, they become surrogate father and son to each other. The chemistry between the two actors is what shines in this movie. It doesn't even matter that you can pretty much guess the end half way through, because it doesn't matter, you want Daniel and Mr. Miyagi to win, and it is totally satisfying when they do. The heavy in this movie is played by 80's bad boy staple, William Zabka, and he is truly a real jerk in this, and it makes you root even more for the underdogs to win. Pat Morita created a truly wonderful character in Mr. Miyagi, he is kind, caring, and funny in a subtle kind of way, in fact he has most of the funniest lines in the movie. Oh yea, he knows Karate as well, this is one old guy I would not want to mess with. There were two sequels with both Mr. Miyagi and Daniel. The first sequel was, in my opinion, as good as the first. The second sequel was good, not great like the first two. There was a third sequel, but Ralph Macchio was not in it, and although Pat Morita was still good, you can tell he was not as into it as he was in the first three. This was a movie you could not help but walk away from feeling good. It was a story of friendship, of two people who brought out the best in each other. I recently showed this movie to my kids, and they loved it, it was great to see them cheering for Daniel at the end. The test of a movie's longevity is its ability to entertain generations of viewers, and this is definitely a movie that does that.