You won't be disappointed!

Such a frustrating disappointment

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

After the unexpected success of the first "Karate Kid" movie, someone felt the need to make two more of them. Admittedly, the original movie is a good one and it deserves its cult status. Second one is quite poor. Part 3 is ever so slightly an improvement over its predecessor but it's still routine fare. As before, the martial arts is fairly tame stuff. Old Pat Morita still can't move all that quickly as his attempts at Karate only induce a few chuckles! It was good to see Martin Kove return as the former nemesis of Daniel La Russo. At the beginning, we are shown how the passing years have treated Reese (Kove). His dojo - once a thriving establishment - is now completely deserted. After the rather embarrassing events of the first movie, Reese is no longer in demand to teach Karate. We see a lot of unpaid bills and a man who appears to be a shadow of his former self. The camera passes along some remnants of the past: tournament trophies, posters advertising his dojo etc. The story offers nothing new at all but is just about digestible.

By almost accidentally funny, I mean that I believe that Miyagi and Daniel-san seem to be spoofing their first two movie selves. Their behavior here was ridiculous. The serious worldly wisdom, the steady focused and structured mind of Miyagi went out the window. The improved confidence and skills of Daniel also went out the window. Daniel now decided to turn into a whining crybaby. And he seemingly lost a lot of the karate skills he'd previously learned because he let himself be completely overtaken by yellow freakin fear, fear he did not have in the far east when fighting Chozen. Chozen was a tougher, more dangerous karate master enemy than Mike Barnes is in KK3. In KK2, Daniel was actually fighting to the death. He was fighting a real Asian martial arts man, someone much closer to Bruce Lee than Barnes is. In KK3, Daniel is back to just fighting for points with a referee, and he acts three times as whiny and scared as in KK2 and he seems to not know what he's doing anymore karate wise when Barns and his goons are attacking him. Daniel's trainer even tells Daniel the absolute correct message that proves my point "I make wimps into winners, not the other way round!" No joke! What was Daniel's deal here? How did he fall backwards like that? What happened to all of the skills and courage he'd learned? I don't get it!Mr. Miyagi also lost his pearls of wisdom and karate mastery. And for some reason he never explained well, he refused to train Daniel for this movie's tournament. He obviously chose to step aside and to stop trying, and even caring. When Barnes and his pals beat the **** out of Daniel and trash Miyagi s new Bonsai shop, Miyagi chooses to handle it by completely ignoring what happened, singing, and going fishing. If this was supposed to have been some kind of joke from the writers, I wasn't laughing. And then the sweep joke from Miyagi with the broom. I, personally would not even be sure Daniel needed much training for this movie's tournament after defeating Chozen. If he could triumph over Chozen, how did he suddenly turn into such a chicken s*** helpless wimp with Barnes? And Daniel's constant scardy cat whining? Why did he suddenly turn into a complete little p***y b***h!? Then we have a Steven Segal look alike who offers to train Daniel because Miyagi won't. But "Segal" is not really on Daniel's side. He's really with Barnes and he's twofaced with Daniel until near the end of the movie. "Segal" is actually the guy who set Barnes up to go after Daniel to get even with his old friend John Kreese, William Zabka's karate teacher from the first film, for Daniel and Miyagi helping to ruin Kreese's business. Robyn Lively is the girlfriend of this movie, but she was actually more of just a friend and she leaves the movie (moves back to Ohio) before the tournament and the end of the movie. Why? Daniel's girlfriends stayed through til the end in the first two films. And why didn't the cute Asian girl from KK2 come back with Daniel from Asia and be with him here? Simple, because the actress that played her didn't want to sign up for this joke of a movie.

The Karate Kid, Part III、as the title suggests, is the third film in the Karate Kid film series, released in 1989, directed by John Avlidsen, and starring Ralph Macchio as Daniel and Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. The Karate Kid film series is a rather typical example of other 1980s film series (such as Robocop) which just run out of steam as time goes on to the extent that they began with a bang and ended with a whimper. Despite its flaws however, The Karate Kid, Part III isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be and is certainly no Robocop 3. This review will discuss the problems with the movie as well as what it gets right, with an overall assessment of the Karate Kid original film series as a whole.One of the biggest problems with this movie is the lack of continuity with the Karate Kid Part II, which for all its flaws did genuinely advance the story and develop Daniel and Miyagi's character. The film is fairly graceless in its dumping of Daniel's love interest Kumiko; it's explained that she just got a job in Japan that she couldn't turn down. This just didn't strike me as believable, perhaps because they had done it before in Part II. Daniel's relationships always happen to end between films? It's frankly insulting when sequels hit the reset button like this.But the real continuity problem is one that is never addressed at all, and that is the relationship between Yuki and Miyagi. This is not presented as a mere superficial teenage romance, but instead as true love. Miyagi even says that he would stay in Okinawa, if not for the people trying to kill him. So why doesn't Miyagi stay in Okinawa after the conclusion of Part II, or take Yuki to America? It's never explained. This film takes a dump on Miyagi and Daniel's development; the second film may as well have never happened.Moreover, all the balance and self-control that Daniel developed in the first two films is gone, indeed Daniel if anything seems even more neurotic and unbalanced than he was at the beginning of the original film. Daniel is whiny and angsty, going into long diatribes about his own inadequacy. This would be less irksome if it were a response to something far more drastic; but in Part II the villains were trying to kill him and his master; in Part III they are just trying to take away his title as champion by defeating him in a local karate tournament. So, Daniel is cool-headed when threatened with death in a foreign land, but the prospect of losing his title to a bunch of local punks turns him into a nervous wreck? The film also fails to find a coherent theme, besides poorly retreading the original.That said, the film does manage to get some things right. As whiny as Daniel is, he retains something of his likability, even if it is diminished. We also have the things that make the whole series fun; wonderfully over-the-top villains and pseudo-eastern wisdom. The emotional core of the film is tarnished but intact; that of the relationship between Daniel and Miyagi. These two characters, although somewhat botched, still work together well.None of the original Karate Kid films are by themselves incoherent, but taken as a whole the series is rather lopsided. They do get progressively worse as the series goes on, and by the end of Part III one is glad they never made a fourth film (unless you count the Next Karate Kid, and I don't). Still, while it's a shame that they never managed to quite recapture the magic of the first film, I'm glad I got to spend 3 films in the company of these terrific characters.

I loved the first two Karate Kid films. Although not masterpieces due to their schmaltzy moments, they had original concepts and very compelling story lines while having some great character depth to it. I wasn't sure whether or not this would disappoint me, but after watching several clips of this on youtube, it doesn't look that bad, but it could've been so much better. The story's predictable and a retread of the first, the script is much weaker compared to the two predecessor's scripts, and the villains are boring and uninteresting due to their unrealistic motives.There are some redeeming qualities, however. The acting isn't all that bad. Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita did great with their chemistry, it did move very briskly, the directing is pretty solid, the karate action sequences are perfect and well-choreographed and the ending is decent and emotional along with great messaging about never lose to fear. Overall, not terrible, but completely lackluster, in my honest opinion.Rating: 5.8/10