Looking for a light hearted film to watch on a rainy Snday afternoon I found hiiden away in my video collection this movie and remembered it with fond affection.
Ralph Maccio plays the lead character Daniel Larusso who together with his single parent mother moves to California from their Esat Coast home to start a new life. Daniel is out of place attending the preppie West Coast school and soon falls foul of the local bully boys led by the blonde haired rich kid Johnny. It just so happens that all of his gang are members of a karate school called the Cobra Kai Dojo and they are quite happy to practice their moves on Daniel.
One Halloween while the gang dressed in skeleton costumes are pursuing Daniel and ar about to give him a beating rescue comes in the unusual form of the janitor at the apartments where Daniel lives. Mr Miyagi an elderly small Japanese man proves to be rather good at karate and soon sees off the cowardly gang.
He then agrees to teach Daniel how to defend himself and enter the annual karate tournament to help him face up to his bullies. The rest of the ilm follows a rather predictable path with Daniel having to come to terms with his teachers rather unusual teaching style.
This film is good wholesome entertainment, it makes no apology for being predictable and there are some nice humourous moments in it. It certainly has a feel good factor to it and while there are some fight scenes they are not very graphic however if watching with young kids you can expect them to replicate some of the moves and even older kids are not beyond this judging by the actions of my other half who is still a big kid going on his attempt to replicate the swan kick.
Some of the characters are a bit stereotypcal of American teen movies with Daniels love interest coming from the better off side of the tracks as does his tormentors. Ralph Maccio puts in a good performance as Danny and the film was successful enough to warrant a couple of follow up films however in those the plot tended to go totally over the top.
Watching this film again after probably 15 years I did feel that some of the performances were a little unconvincing especially the leader of the Dojo who seems to totally over react when coaching his team in the competition.
On the whole though this film is well worth watching and good family entertainment.
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Production Year: 1976 - Martial Arts, Action & Adventure - Director: Lo Wei - Original Language: Cantonese - Classification: TBA, 18 years and over - Starring: Jackie Chan, Sing Chang, Wei Lo, Nora Miao
Production Year: 1981 - Martial Arts - Director: Kenji Misumi, Robert Houston - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Kayo Matsuo, Minoru Ohki, Akiji Kobayashi, Shin Kishida, Masahiro Tomikawa, Tomisaburo Wakayama
Production Year: 1972 - Martial Arts - Director: Bruce Lee - Original Language: English\Cantonese\Chinese - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: Bruce Lee, Nora Miao, Chuck Norris, Robert Wall, Jon T. Benn
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Feb 14th, 2007
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