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After a nice rest, I'm back, recharged and refreshed. Well, not really, because I just found out that I have to see The New Guy this week. Enough to put anyone in a bad mood, isn't it? I still have my hopes, however. Hopes that the movie won't be really bad, like The Sweetest Thing, but bad in a way that I can appreciate, like The Karate Kid, Part III. A lot of you may have heard the term "guilty pleasure movie." If you haven't, it's a movie that is terrible in every way imaginable, but you just can't get enough of it. You hide your Criterion Edition DVD, keep your copy of the script in your underwear drawer, and mutter the lines quietly to yourself while sitting in traffic. Guilty pleasures are your dirty secret, only to be shared after another person has told you of theirs. We should hold meetings: underground gatherings of film fans; each of us anonymous, known only by a first name. There are no career castes here, only the mutual understanding that we are powerless before our vices. Hi, I'm Ian, and I love The Karate Kid, Part III. I really do. If it's on cable, I can pretty much send my remote out of the house. There will be no channel flipping, not even at commercials, for I fear that I may miss just one second of TKKP3 (That's my little nerdy pet name for it). I don't even mind the commercials. They give me time to digest what I've seen, and look forward to the grand moments that are yet to come. If your unfamiliar with the story, good for you. Seriously, there's no need for anyone to see this movie. I'm not telling you to go out and rent it, because you won't like it. You have taste. We pick up where part 2 left off, with Daniel and Mr. Myagi returning from a trip to Okinawa, Japan. Daniel's mother is staying with a sick aunt, and their landlord has turned the building condo. Daniel moves in with Myagi, with plans to register for college in a few days. I must interject here and mention that Ralph Macchio has got to be thirty here, playing an eighteen year-old. It's so very sad. I imagine Macchio thought the first film would be a great launching pad to better roles. We're sorry, Ralph. Anyway, Daniel decides that college isn't for him, so he uses his tuition money to lease a store for Mr. Myagi to sell Bonsai trees. Across town, John Kreese, (Martin Kove, you know, the "Mercy is for the weak" guy from the first film) has fallen on hard times. Since his brand of karate teaching to clearly evil, he's lost all of his students. He goes to an old friend, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) who is clearly also evil, because while we are not told what he does for a living, he's rich, and he's on the phone talking about dumping nuclear waste. Boo! Silver tells Kreese to take a powder, and that he'll set up a nice little revenge scenario. Silver hires "Tournament Bad Boy" Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan) to harass Daniel into defending his title at the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament. Two quick things here: Under 18?!?!?! Also, the timeline is screwier than a reality TV series. How did a year pass since the end of the first movie? Didn't Daniel just go to Japan for the summer? These questions aren't answered. Anyway, Barnes gets Daniel to enter the tournament, but... here comes the wrinkle-Mr. Myagi refuses to train him! Uh-oh! Terry Silver shows up just in time to offer to train Daniel, after telling Daniel and Myagi that he was a friend of Kreese, and Kreese has died. Silver trains Daniel in a most Kresse-esque fashion, and before he knows it, Daniel is punching the guy from Real Genius in the face at a nightclub. Daniel decides that he doesn't want to fight, but Silver informs Daniel that he must fight Barnes, and reveals the whole sorted plot. Myagi saves Daniel from a beating, and then agrees to train him. Can Daniel overcome the odds again beat Mike Barnes at the tournament. Yes, of course he does. Okay, I've recapped, now I have to explain what I love about the films. Keep in mind that these are all terribly done things, but I can't help myself. The Acting It's hysterically phoned in. Almost everyone appears to have about a trillion things they'd rather be doing. I have this theory that Macchio and Pat Morita only agreed to do the film if they didn't have to take one second out of their life, so the producers agreed to film the movie on the fly. They'd call Macchio in the morning and ask him what he has planned for that day, and then set up the cameras wherever he would happen to be. He'd walk into his dry cleaners or whatever, run through the lines, and then continue on his way. The noticeable exception is Thomas Ian Griffith. He turns the character of Terry Silver into one of the most classic villains in film history. There is not a scene in the film in which he doesn't laugh. I'm not kidding. He has this snicker that he whips out every twenty seconds, and he genuinely seems to revel in his evil. This is a man who clearly enjoys working at revenge. It's been six days since my last viewing. The Script If for no other reason that it completely rips off the first Karate Kid. I know, these films are always formulaic, but this one goes the extra mile by almost cloning the first film. There's nothing in the first one that's not in this one, with one hilarious exception. When looking at Ralph Macchio's age, they figured that using Robyn Lively's character as a love interest was just too much of a stretch. She was barely out of diapers when the first film was released, and it must have been a little creepy for everyone involved. Instead, they embark on a platonic relationship, which makes her serve no purpose at all. A quick additional note on the story here: when I first saw this film, I missed the first ten minutes. I have no idea that Kreese was actually alive, and that Silver was evil. I took him at his word. When the big reveal came in the Cobra Kai dojo, in which Silver tells Daniel that Barnes is working for him, and Daniel tries to run out of the dojo, which is right next to a life size standee of Kreese, and the real Kreese jumps out... I just about lost my shit. I was floored at the swerve that they had pulled on me. In retrospect, I really think the film would have worked better if they had cut the first ten minutes. Also, I don't think I'd blow your mind if I tell you that Daniel wins the tournament. How does he win? What new, insane move does he use? Well, the first film had the famous crane kick, the second had the drug technique, and the third has kata. Kata is basically a series of stretching exercises. Daniel starts doing Kata in the last round, and Barnes is completely befuddled. He doesn't know what to do, and he panics, attacking Daniel in a stupid bum's rush. Daniel sidesteps it and punches him in the back. Yup, that's our hero. The Direction It's hard to imagine an aspect of this film that's worse than the script, but the direction is heads and shoulders worse than the script. It's terrible, to be frank. Director John G. Avildsen, who also directed the first two films, as well as Rocky V, another supreme guilty pleasure film, seems to have no concept on how movie scenes work. Just about every scene in which characters are doing something has a running commentary by the actors of what they are, in fact, doing at that moment. For example: when Daniel and Mr. Myagi rappel down a cliff to plant a bonsai tree, Daniel will simply not stop babbling. When he unwraps the plastic from around the tree's base, he says, "let's get this plastic off of you." When he waters the tree, he says "here, how about a nice cool drink of water, little guy." Another great scene is in the nightclub, when Daniel and Robyn Lively decide to dance. While they are dancing, Daniel starts saying things like "All right! Let's boogie! Get Down," while Lively says, "Wee! Rock and Roll!" Thank God Avildsen decided to have his characters explain exactly what they were doing, because I was starting to get lost. After all this, is it any wonder I can't
help myself? Can you understand why I lose all my will the second
I here that music? The pan flutes that have no reason for being
in the movie? I swear to God, if someone used this film to start
a religious cult, it would take me approximately fifteen seconds
to shave my head and give them all my Earthly possessions. See
you tomorrow. |
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