What made The Karate Kid a hit?: The Karate Kid is nothing if not a formula movie, and a number of ingredients were combined to make the film resound with audiences. To begin with, there’s the always dependable “underdog” element, which director John G. Avildsen previously mined with his Oscar-winning film Rocky. Then, of course, there was a sport that the hero had to learn in order to succeed- karate, of course, to capitalize on the burgeoning martial-arts craze. Finally, it was also a high-school movie- one which found new kid Daniel (Ralph Macchio), recently moved to California from New Jersey, forced to learn karate to fight off the bullies. With these three elements, it hardly mattered to audiences that the film was almost completely predictable.
Like its hero, The Karate Kid was an underdog, with few studio executives expecting it to make much money. What they didn’t count on was the word-of-mouth and repeat business that followed its release. Much of the buzz was fueled by the film’s most popular character, the elderly maintenance man Mr. Miyagi who trains the film’s hero Daniel (Ralph Macchio) in martial arts. As played by longtime character actor Noriyuki “Pat” Morita- recognizable to viewers from his recurring role as Happy Days’ Arnold- Mr. Miyagi’s cranky inscrutability and unorthodox training methods make him feel like a flesh-and-blood version of Yoda. With its comfortable formula and Morita’s scene-stealing (and Oscar-nominated) performance, Karate Kid became the surprise hit of 1984, and beloved Miyagi-isms like “wax on, wax off” quickly entered the pop culture lexicon.
What happened?: As is so often the case, Hollywood just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Flush with the film’s unexpected box-office success, Columbia Pictures promptly green-lit a second Karate Kid adventure, one which took Daniel and Mr. Miyagi to the mentor’s childhood home on Okinawa. But while the second film actually managed to outgross the first, the well had run dry with the third installment, a pale retread of the original movie, which wasn’t that original to begin with. Then, after biding five more years, Columbia decided the public needed yet another Karate Kid, but without Macchio involved the main character became a girl, played by future two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. Add to this a short-lived Saturday morning Karate Kid series, and you get the idea- the public just got Karate Kid-ed out.
Does The Karate Kid still work?: Not really. Now that the film’s heyday has passed, Karate Kid looks hokier than ever. The formulas that made the movie a hit have been played out, and the film itself isn’t good enough to transcend them. It doesn’t help that the film (which runs a bloated 127 minutes) has a lot of slow patches, which are largely found in the scenes that don’t involve Mr. Miyagi. Daniel’s relationship with “Ali-with-an-I” (future Oscar-nominee-turned-fertility-nurse Elisabeth Shue) starts promisingly, but quickly turns to a clichéd movie romance with a touch of a rich girl/poor boy dynamic, and the screenplay can’t be bothered to find a new wrinkle. No less formulaic is the pack of eeeeeeeeevil martial artists from the Cobra Kai dojo, where all of the best students are blonde preppies and the classes are run like a cross between boot camp and a meeting of the Hitler Youth. It should goes without saying that Daniel is a dark-haired, brown-eyed Italian-American boy.
Then there’s Avildsen’s direction, which is clumsy and hamfisted. In the eight years since Rocky, he apparently forgot how to shoot action, since the fight scenes here generally move too quickly to tell most of what’s happening. Meanwhile, Avildsen intersperses plenty of sunsets, along with a number of cheesy montages, all of which are underscored with the most obvious music choices (I call it “The Tao of Steve Syndrome”). A beach party is set to The Flirts and Jan & Dean’s “(Bop Bop) On the Beach”, a song called a song called “Young Hearts” underscores Macchio and Shue’s first date, and the final tournament is accompanied by Joe Esposito’s deathless dumb-as-dust (and sadly memorable) power ballad “You’re the Best.” All of these factors and more make Rocky look like the model of subtlety and restraint by 
comparison.
Yet when Mr. Miyagi is onscreen, the movie still works pretty well. Sure, the wise Asian mentor is an age-old stereotype, but Morita makes the character a lot of fun. Supposedly, the great Toshiro Mifune tested for the role, but while his intense presence would have overwhelmed the story, Morita is just stern enough, while leavening the character with a gentle wit that makes him pretty irresistible. It’s been a good twenty years since I last saw The Karate Kid, and I was taken aback by how much of the film didn’t involve Mr. Miyagi. I think it says something about the movie that I’d forgotten most of the movie but remembered almost all of Mr. Miyagi’s scenes, wouldn’t you say?