![]() Maybe the worst thing about this movie is that deep down, somewhere buried underneath the terrible acting and the awful script, there were some good ideas here. It is just so hard to take seriously that you get a sadistic pleasure out of it, kind of like watching somebody get hammered with a 2X4 in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But in this one, it's just a massive beating. Miyagi focused on defense and maintaining a positive attitude, Daniel could survive a fight against a privileged bully and a brutal Okinawan street fighter who did not have this kind of positive influence. I have always thought that the greatest achievement of the first two movies was that they made Daniel's triumphs believable and convincing. He just stands there like a doughboy punching bag, yelping out in pain with his girly voice. Only this time, he doesn't try to throw any punches or block anything. At the end, Daniel finally faces down the big bully. They are grown men, but their lives revolve around torturing a 17 year old boy as revenge for winning a karate tournament. They play over the top, exaggerated cartoon villains, whose only function is to be pointlessly mean. The minor actors in the movie, like Thomas Ian Griffith (the evil pony tail guy) and Martin Kove (the big evil trainer from the first movie) seem to get the joke here. You can tell that just about everybody acting in this movie knows that it's a stinker, so why bother trying? Ralph Macchio totally phones in his performance, and so does Pat Morita (Miyagi). Miyagi seems like an insensitive dope because he makes Daniel get beaten to a pulp multiple times before he will finally agree to train him. He is such a wimp with no defensive instincts, and at this point, Mr. At some point, we start sympathizing more with the bullies than Daniel. At no point, does it cross anyone's mind to call the cops. Miyagi does absolutely nothing but push the bullies out the door. His, uh, "girlfriend" gets harassed and almost assaulted as some bullies trash Mr. He's pushing 30, but he is still 17 in the movie and he sounds like he is about 13. So what do we get? We get an hour and a half of poor Danny getting abused over and over again. I find it next to impossible that anyone associated with this movie honestly expected the audience to buy this, but they were far enough into the project that they had no choice but to finish it. Quickly, the script was rewritten with all of Daniel's fight scenes taken out, and the tournament rules changed so that all Daniel had to do to defend his title was show up for the last fight. Then Ralph Macchio showed up for day 1 pudgy and out of shape, and panic erupted. The script writers cooked up another story about Daniel fighting the Cobra Kais, getting beaten up, competing in the karate tournament once again, and then winning in the end. Here is what I think happened – the producers decided that they wanted to cash in on the franchise one more time, so they decided to bring back Mr. ![]() It is like a train wreck, but with this wreck, the passengers are all slipping on banana peels as they exit the train. ![]() It is more unintentionally funny than most actual comedies, and it provides as much entertainment value by accident as lots of movies do on purpose. Truth be told, this is one of the worst movies ever made, and that is why you absolutely must see it. I don't know how many stars to give this movie, because a 1 tells you not to see it, and a 10 tells you that it is an excellent movie. I've gotta wonder how this movie is different from Kamen's original script because it all feels very off. But I was surprised at how unsympathetic LaRusso was in this movie, and it's not very well-written. Pat Morita makes this all sorta worthwhile because he well wears the weariness of a character that loses so much in the story. Pitting Daniel against Miyagi didn't make much sense because it could've all been handled with some rational explaining (but Daniel this time around is more hotheaded than ever). They're just such one-dimensional bad guys. And it's all at the behest of the always-leering Terry Silver. But the plan is to put the kid through psychological torment and macho head games to finally break his spirit and put the hurt on him. That's kinda by-the-numbers for a second sequel, but I can see how they'd go with this for the hook. Alright, so Kreese has bottomed out, and he's looking to rise from the muck and destroy Daniel LaRusso. But there's a dour tone to this entire movie, and it all seems a bit silly. And seeing him outsmart the other guy was kinda nice. Daniel was physically outmatched (yeah, I know, he always is), but it was just nice to see something good come out of all of this. I've gotta say, I was surprised by the ending to THE KARATE KID PART III.
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