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A few days ago I watched The Karate Kid and The Karate Kid, Part Two for the first time in ages. Actually, I used to regularly watch The Karate Kid, but I'm not sure I've seen the second one since I saw it in the theaters 19 years ago. I watched the second one first, as an artefact of the way I got old of the DVDs (from the local library), and enjoyed it. It was sad seeing Pat Morita, though, now that he's gone. I did get to relive my crush on the beautiful Tamlyn Tomita, though, and when I saw The Day After Tomorrow for the first time a couple of days later (I enjoyed that one...play it again with the director's commentary for some good jabs at Bush and Cheney), I immediately recognized her in it...more mature, but still heartbreakingly beautiful.
Even the hated-and-feared Peter Cetera's theme song had nostalgic appeal and spoke to that substantial quixotic part of me that's been responsible for all sorts of strife in my life. "I am a man who will fight for your honor," and all that crap. :-)
The first movie is the one that hit me at a formative time, though I was a couple or three years older than the film's teen characters when I saw it at the movies. It struck me at the time as a Rocky-style film and it wasn't until much later that I realized the two projects had the same director. I've got a fair bit of martial arts experience and, though some of the film's perhaps unrealistic in time scale, they did a good job in keeping the principles true to classic martial tradition. I even had a rogue, sadistic karate instructor -- not unlike Kreese -- when I was 13...the f***er put me off martial arts for years thereafter, after he broke my arm, and I would just love to meet him now.
And I was head-over-heels in love with Elisabeth Shue, who I always thought was perhaps a little too much woman for Daniel-San. It probably helps that I was for a long time totally infatuated with a girl who looked a lot like Elisabeth Shue did in that film -- true to form, I never told said girl and lost what I am pretty sure now could have been a nice opportunity. But I'll always have Elisabeth Shue. :loveya:
The film's an enjoyable one for me, though there's that inevitable nostalgia value, a touchstone to a time right before I began hating the fact that I was getting older (okay...20...it seemed old at the time) and still hadn't had a girlfriend, kisses, and all that good stuff. And four years later I was living in the San Fernando Valley, Karate Kid territory...I even recognize some of the locations and one is basically across the road from where I lived before I left Los Angeles for Vegas. Though 1984 is long gone, as is the Valley I knew a few years later (like the Sherman Oaks Galleria is even, like, totally so not the same) it's still there for me in this movie.
And so is Pat Morita. RIP, Noriyuki. :-(
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