The Karate Kid, Part II (1986)

Genre: Action/Drama

Starring: Pat Morita, Ralph Macchio, Dany Kamekona, Tamlyn Tomita, Yuji Okumoto, Nobu McCarthy

Why is a sequel necessary? Any producer or director would give any one of the following two reasons. Firstly, the story is incomplete which needs to come to a logical conclusion, which is a perfectly acceptable reasoning, or secondly, to fully exploit a successful movies concept to extract as much juice as you can. Its the latter that causes most of the sequels to fall flat on its face with part II of The Karate Kid being no exception. Directly continuing where the movie left the last time, Daniel (Macchio) is the proud winner of the Karate tournament and is continuing his training with Mr. Miyagi (Morita). Miyagi recieves a letter from Okinawa, his village in Japan where his father is sick and is lying on his death bed. Miyagi explains that he once loved a woman called Yukie (McCarthy) who was arranged to marry his best friend Sato (Kamekona). When Miyagi announced his intentions, Sato wanted him to fight to death. Not wanting to fight Sato, Miyagi fled to the states without Yukie. Now, Miyagi has to return to Okinawa and realises that he would have to face Sato's wrath that he has curtailed for all these years. The movie is a massive deviation from the first movie and has lost its focus from Karate to become a family drama. Miyagi becomes the central character of the movie and Daniel seems to just be there because he has to. There is absolutely no training or excitement left in the movie that made its predecessor so famous. The movie is also inconsistent with respect to Daniel and Miyagi's love life and is a hugely predictable, two-hour long boring waste of time.

Thumbs up: Morita's performance

Thumbs down: Loses charm of first movie, outright boring

Rating: 5.6/10