Karate Kid Collection: Karate Kid (DVD)

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Sony has just released a "Karate Kid Collection" that features a video upgrade on all four films and some special features, including a commentary for the first one.

The Karate Kid
Though it focused on high school students and contained enough teen angst to fill a gymnasium, "The Karate Kid" was a knock-down hit with adults as well as its younger target audience. No doubt that's because its director, John G. Avildsen, also directed the first Stallone rags-to-riches, zero-to-hero boxing film, and this one plays like "Rocky" for kids.

Asian-American actor Pat Morita earned an Oscar nomination for his role as Mr. Miyagi, the mild-mannered mentor who takes a young New Jersey transplant under his wing at the California apartment complex where he works as a handyman.

Morita was first turned down for the part because the filmmakers didn't want to cast a comedian in the role. Now, of course, Morita-as-Miyagi is famous for some memorable scenes and lines, such as the one where he's trying to catch a fly in mid-air with chopsticks and his young protégé does it on the first try. "You beginner luck," the old man scoffs. The surrogate father-son and master-pupil relationship between Mr. Miyagi and young Daniel LaRusso is as much a focus as the boy's developing crush on rich-girl Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue, who took time out from her studies at Harvard to make the film). But of course the plot thread that captures the attention of all those testosterone-saturated kids on the cusp is the bullying Daniel endures at the hands of a group of boys who learn a negative style of karate from the Cobra Kai dojo.

Daniel, meanwhile, learns from an old man who "inherited" his karate in Okinawa. Unlike the Cobra Kai sensei, Mr. Miyagi learned karate and fishing from his father and fought only for his life, not for points. He has no belt, which, he laughs, is only good for holding up pants. And while the Cobra Kai Sensei, John Kreese (sneeringly played by Martin Kove) has a photo of himself in his Vietnam special forces uniform with gun hanging in his dojo, Miyagi's medal of honor from WWII lies secreted away in a box for his protégé to discover. The Cobra Kais are taught to strike first, fight dirty, and show no mercy, while Miyagi, whose teaching is as organic as his approach to pruning his beloved bonsai trees, instructs Daniel that he is learning karate so the he will not have to fight. Though the conflict of styles couldn't be more stereotypically good vs. evil, the inevitable showdown between Daniel and his nemesis, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), is as satisfying as the fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed. After all, not only is he the bully from hell (he and his thug friends ride motorcycles and wear matching skeleton costumes on Halloween), but he's a pot-smoking Eddie Haskell of a rich kid who acts proper in front of the country club set and punks it up at school. As the abusive ex-boyfriend of the girl Daniel likes, he's begging to be taken down a few pegs. There's plenty of action and a wonderful weave of plot-threads in the first film, which makes it an 8/10.

The Karate Kid II
If the sequel had played instead of the first film, it might have gotten a better reception. But it repeats so many of the same devices and structures that it suffers by comparison. Even the tradition of an annoying title sequence continues (in the first, it was the compressed-but-still-long drive that Daniel and his mom made from New Jersey to California; in the second, as if it were a TV two-parter, we have to watch scenes from the first film all over again). Still, it's entertaining enough.

The action picks up immediately after the tournament that ended the first film. This time Mr. Miyagi gets a note from an old flame telling him his father is dying, and he returns to Okinawa, accompanied by his young protégé. The relationship between Miyagi and Daniel continues to develop, with Daniel eventually helping his teacher cope with the loss of a father, as he had to do. But the bullies are overly familiar this time, every sneer and smear, every push and taunt a déjà vu. They're met at the airport by a smarmy young Okinawan who takes them not to Mr. Miyagi's village, but to a warehouse owned by his old rival, Sato (Danny Kamekona). It turns out that Miyagi had asked his father to break the father-son tradition and also teach Sato karate at the same time. But the two became rivals for the same young woman, and when Miyagi left for America, leaving behind a woman who would never marry anyone else, Sato felt betrayed. So of course Okinawa's premier karate teacher is now out to beat Miyagi in a life-or-death grudge match, while his annoying nephew and his "gang" (yes, the nephew is the star pupil who, like Johnny, teaches other karate students and always has the do-badders with him) keep pushing until Daniel also has to spring into action. The nephew, Chozen, is sneeringly (what else?) played by Yuji Okumoto ("Pearl Harbor").

Daniel finds a new love to replace the one who dumped him (apparently Shue had no interest in the sequel), and it adds the same soft balance to an otherwise hard story as the first film. Tamlyn Tomita is perfectly engaging as Kumiko, and so, for that matter, is Nobu McCarthy as Yukie, the woman who came between best friends. Morita and Macchio turn in decent performances again, as do the women. The change of scenery is wonderful, the sideplots full of depth, and the script relatively strong. But the villains are so familiar that they seem like carbon copies of the first batch, transplanted across the Pacific. That, other structural similarities, and a tension that just isn't as sustained as the first make this one a 6/10, or, for fans, a 7/10.

The Karate Kid Part III
Adding "part" to this threequel didn't help one bit. More than the first films, this one will appeal only to kids and members of the Ralph Macchio Fan Club. Maybe not even them, because Ralph-as-Daniel even goes against beloved old Mr. Miyagi this time. But everything else is by the book. Kumiko didn't return to America with Daniel, preferring to follow her dream and dance for a Tokyo company, while Mr. Miyagi finally establishes his retirement-dream bonsai shop. But there's no retiring for Daniel, who is pressured into a match between a top student at the old Cobra Kai dojo that went bankrupt but, under the watchful evil eye of the former bad-ass owner's bad-ass army buddy, is going for a revival. Thomas Ian Griffith plays Terry Silver, who threatens and backs Daniel into a corner so he'll fight the Cobra Kai's top student, Mike (Sean Kanan). More sneers, more evil, more predictable than ever before. Doesn't it ever occur to anyone to call a cop? The love interest this time around is provided by Robyn Livelly, who plays the owner of a pottery shop across the street from Mr. Miyagi's. A 3/10 is all this one merits. Even fans will have to admit that it's getting old.

The Next Karate Kid
This one is destined for the film-clip games, and that's about it. "What was Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank's first starring film?" Swank, who won an Oscar for her role as a girl determined to pass for a boy in "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), is pretty Tomboyish in "The Next Karate Kid." Playing opposite Pat Morita as an orphan with a chip on her shoulder the size of a board, Swank is the clichéd good-at-heart delinquent who's turned around by the patient tutelage of Mr. Miyagi . . . and a road trip to a Buddhist monastery. If a wind kicked up, it would blow all of these characters right off the page. And where's the karate? A better title might have been "The Next Troubled Teen."