Director: Curtis Hanson
Writers: Harvey Applebaum, Louis G. Atlee, Rudolph Borchert, and Alan Ormsby
From: Cult Cinema
A pair of brothers on a trip with their grandfather witness a kidnapping. They have to use their wits and karate skills to save their kidnapped friend.
A children’s movie about children written by people who hate children. These films are easy to spot since they have kids doing a sort of “kid power” thing—setting off on an adventure to save the day after the available adults refuse to listen—only the kids all suck. They all suck. Insufferable bastards to a one.
Yeah, the movie’s a delight.
Anyway, Woody is late to his karate class and has to wait at the side until the teacher lets him in. Woody’s full of bluster and energy, but not a whole lot of ability. His older brother Zack is a student as well. That’s the full description of Zack.
Their grandfather, J.J., picks them up in his camper and tells them he’s taking them on a weekend trip to the lake. There’s no indication of whether he’s cleared this with the boys’ parents or evidence that he’s prepared for this at all since the boys are wearing their karate gi the whole movie. As they’re driving to the campsite, their dumpy little camper is passed by a bus-sized luxury camper driven by the Forbingers. The Forbingers are a family of three—an 80’s corporate type, his wife who’s mad that he doesn’t have time for the family, and their daughter Carol who exists. Inevitably, these two families’ paths will cross again.
They’ll have to since the movie switches over to the Forbingers for a good chunk at this point.
Anyway, the Forbingers go off the road and get stuck. They’re found by a pair of backwoods brothers who help them get back on the road, but not before getting a good eyeful of the expensive RV and everything in it. They tell their ma back home and work up a plan to rob the RV that night at the campground.
The two families meet again, the kids start hanging out, and they all go to the hoedown. The kids leave together but Carol ends up at the RV when the brothers are robbing it and is taken hostage. Zack follows them and sees the kidnappers take Carol into a cave. The police are useless blunderers and the FBI is called once the kidnappers send a ransom note. Eventually Zack and Woody find Carol, but Woody is kidnapped while Zack goes to get the authorities. Zack and J.J. follow the kidnappers’ path, find their home, and Zack gets his karate class to join him to rescue everyone.
The class rides as far as they can on the bikes of a motorcycle gang…
No, shut up, I’m rushing through this. THIS IS ME RUSHING THROUGH THIS!
and fight the kidnappers. Woody finally does the flying kick that he couldn’t at the beginning and saves the day. THE END.
I was going to ask how this took four people to write, but now I’m amazed that only four people were involved in this script. I mean, it’s fine as an adventure plot. You can see precursors to The Goonies in this with kids facing real threats and having to save the day. The Goonies is a good benchmark, though, because it handles the tone very well. The kids each have their own personality, the villains are distinct and sincerely threatening, and, while there’s humor, the kids and their situation is never played up for laughs. When the kids are at risk, they’re facing real harm. When they’re facing disappointment, it’s specific to that character and played seriously.
In Karate Kids U.S.A., you never get away from a smirking condescension that permeates the film. “Oh, these kids are fighting the kidnappers. Isn’t that cute!” “The kidnapper seems kind of rapey with this little girl. *hyuck*hyuck*hyuck*”
As an example of getting the tone wrong, the cops are played for laughs. Now, dunk on cops in media all you want. Play them up as hateful cowardly monsters striving to work for their own benefit before any pretense of risking anything to help anyone else—you know, as cops. Don’t play them up as lazy gormless morons with generally good intentions. The deputy that comes to get the parents’ report of their daughter’s disappearance is too stupid to write down their statement. The work is so over his head that he has to call the sheriff down to do it. The sheriff is his daddy and hadn’t come himself because the chili he’d eaten earlier was too spicy.
Remember, at this point Carol’s been grabbed in the night by two strangers and stashed on a ledge in a cave where she’s facing the possibility of falling into a deep pit. Rats are milling about her. Hilarious, right?!
So it just sucks. As I noted at the top, you can tell the writers hate children because the children are all annoying. Look at a film like A Wrinkle in Time. That’s a movie made for kids that’s trying to take kids seriously. Because of that, the children in the film aren’t teeth-gratingly insufferable. Karate Kids U.S.A. thinks kids are teeth-gratingly insufferable and so portrays them as such. The only thing that could possibly make this movie a recommend is that it’s directed by Curtis Hanson. Yes, the director of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, L.A. Confidential, and the execrable 8 Mile. If you’re a Hanson completionist or just want to see an early film by a Hollywood careerist, this exists. Otherwise, just watch The Goonies or The Karate Kid again. Don’t waste your time on trash like this.
Next up, number 263 of trash like this!
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