The Karate Kid Part 2

I wanted to watch this immediately after the first one, but pale ghost kids and rapping 80's teenagers got in the way. It could have been a good thing because following the first one, this movie pales in comparison.

On it's own, this movie is ok. It's just such a drop in quality after the first movie. This one follows Daniel and Miyagi as they venture off to Okinawa when Miyagi gets a letter saying his father is very sick. I may have missed the part when Daniel's mom said it was ok for her son to fly off to Japan for a couple of months with an elderly man who fixes toilets in their building. Maybe that sort of thing happened all the time back then. 

After the first 10 minutes, the movie has very little to do with the first one. There are a couple of cool training sequences (one that actually doesn't go anywhere even though it looks like it should come back into play at some point) but the focus is taken away from the karate in this one. Instead it becomes more of a love story. 

The problem here, is that I really don't care about any of these characters getting together. Good first movie aside, the character of Daniel is kind of a dick. He has moments where you like him, but for the most part he is actually pretty unlikable. He snaps at people for no reason and he's just sort of an asshole. In the first movie I really didn't care about whether he got together with the girl. I just wanted to see him beat everybody up. Had the woman dumped him immediately afterwards, it wouldn't have phased me at all. Same goes for this movie. I just don't care if he ends up with the girl, why isn't he beating anybody up?!

There is a fight but it comes right at the end and it's sort of a nice surprise since it really looks like there will be big fight at all. This ruins the build-up though. In the first movie you knew there was a fight coming and you were amped. In this one the fight just sort of shows up out of nowhere. It's all just a little anti-climatic. Imagine if in Rocky the whole movie focused on Rocky and Adrien and then all of a sudden Rocky just got into a boxing match. Wouldn't have the same effect would it?

It's better than many sequels, especially from that time period, but it has nothing on the first one. If taken on it's own though, it's decent entertainment.

6/10