Behind the scenes, Macchio was asked how it was out there: "A little rocky," he said, to which director Avildsen, Oscar-winner for Rocky, said, "Yeah, I've heard a lot of people describe the picture that way." Sure enough, The Karate Kid is a pint-sized version of Rocky-a wrong-side-of-the-tracks melodrama married to an underdog sports intrigue that deviates from the saga of the Italian Stallion by making Daniel's love interest a sun-bleached cheerleader and the ending an actual victory rather than just a moral one. There's a moment in The Karate Kid where our hero, Daniel (spindly man-child Macchio, 23 at the time), a fifteen-year-old 90-pound-weakling who's moved to SoCal from Jersey because of his mother's job, is asked to stand in the ocean to develop his balance. Take the intimidating volume of formulaic exercises that fall by the wayside (including The Karate Kid's own sequels) as testament to the difficulty of capturing a tiger by its tail. But credit most of all the enduring power of a familiar tale told with conviction and skill. Avildsen's intuitive direction and Pat Morita's and Ralph Macchio's superlative performances. (And one that launched the career of a two-time Oscar winner, to boot.) Credit a lot of things for that: Bill Conti's classic score John G. Each seminal films of the fabulist '80s in their own way, all three spawned multiple sequels-though, at least until Indiana Jones struggles back to the screen with a walker and oxygen tank, The Karate Kid holds the record with four instalments in total. You never love movies as much or in the same way as you do during this tiny porthole, and when my family first got a VCR (we were the last ones on the block), I pirated Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, and The Karate Kid onto one tape that I watched until you could see through the ribbon. Starring Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Hilary Swank, Michael Ironside, Constance Towersīy Walter Chaw Movies from the magic hour of my moviegoing experience cover that brief period of time between my being able to go to the cinema unattended (dropped at the theatre with a quarter to call the folks afterwards) and my being able to decide that there are actually films I'd rather not see for any price. Starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Robyn Lively, Thomas Ian Griffith Starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Yuji Okumoto, Tamlyn Tomita Starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Martin Kove
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