I’ve just seen this film for the first time in my life.
It’s a bit long, they could probably have trimmed a good 20min off it here and there, but enjoyable.
The storyline follows a tried-and-trusted formula, with plenty of the usual clichés, Daniel arrives in a new town, with all the social problems of the new kid in school. Dealing with the bullies and falling in love etc. We get to invest emotionally in Daniel, and do find ourselves rooting for him. That’s the key. In a situation like this where you kind of know how the story is going to unfold, you have to get the audience behind this character.
The character of Mr Miyagi is very compelling, as he is introduced very subtly indeed. He’s definitely cut from the same cloth as Yoda, or Anthony Hopkins in The Mask Of Zorro, or even the Abbe Faria in The Count Of Monte Cristo (whichever film version you like, or even just the book!). He knows how things work, and how not everything is as it seems, a skill that most people lack.
The device of Miyagi getting Daniel to basically clean the garden as a means of developing his karate instincts is a good one, and one that I saw quickly on what was happening. I thought, “he’s teaching him the moves out of context”. This actually reminds me of a discussion we were having in ROCKS earlier in the year, talking about an episode of The Flintstones where Fred took up ballet to help get back his bowling rhythm. Sometimes two seemingly disparate activities can be more related than they might appear at first glance.
I can even give another good example - the musical collaboration between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson in the early 1980s. Now, at first glance, these two singer-songwriters appear to have nothing in common beyond their both being indisputable giants in their respective genres, and a friend of mine said last year, when I mentioned having bought a best of Michael Jackson, that I as a long-term McCartney/Beatles fan must have found the fact of their collaboration a little surprising. Actually no, I replied. On the surface, it may seem odd, especially when viewed through the prism of Jackson’s 80s albums, BUT, if you go back in time and look at what both of them were doing in the latter part of the 1970s, while the written songs were quite different, the way they were both arranging their records are not unrelated. Compare the styles and arrangements on Jackson’s late 70s hits like “Don’t Stop 'Til You Get Enough” and “Blame It On The Boogie” with McCartney’s chart-toppers from the period, “Listen To What The Man Said” and “Silly Love Songs” - they aren’t as different as you might assume at first glance.
But I digress. Actually, the soundtrack for this film was interesting, and you mentioned Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” - a song that people have mentioned as similar to the theme song from “King Arthur And The Knights Of Justice”. The cartoon itself is hit-and-miss (and more miss than hit if I’m honest), but the theme song is awesome.
There’s a couple of other moments in the film that I found noteworthy. When Daniel finally goes in to kiss Ali, you can see he’s not quite sure how to go about it, and the way he lunges in does indeed suggest a lack of experience, which makes perfect sense for a nervous teenager. Speaking of Ali, note a young Elisabeth Shue, who I know better from Back To The Future as Jennifer in the second and third films, replacing Claudia Wells.
The other moment is of course when Daniel insists on completing the fight, even though he’s battered. He’s standing up to the bullies, he’s already proved himself to his friends, but he now needs to prove himself to his enemies. Sometimes that happens in life. You know what you’re capable of, but you need to make sure that a particular person understands this too.
If I had one quibble with the film, it’s the fact that it’s never explained why Daniel’s father is absent. Is his mother divorced or widowed? We don’t know.
But that aside, I enjoyed it. Sure, like I said at the start, it could have been shorter, but it’s a damn good film.
