Rocky (1976, John G. Avildsen)

By the time Rocky gets to the big fight, you forget there’s actually going to be a big fight. While the film does open with a boxing match, until somewhere decidedly in the late second act, Rocky isn’t a sports movie. It’s a character study of a boxer, sure, but he’s not in a sports movie. He doesn’t have another fight lined up anyway.

The film starts just before Thanksgiving and ends on New Year’s Day. Holidays aren’t important to Rocky (screenwriter, leading man, and fight choreographer Sylvester Stallone), who’s seemingly been alone for a decade. He’s thirty now, breaking legs for a two-bit loan shark (an oddly touching Joe Spinell), getting occasional fights, winning over half of them, and putting up with his gym owner (Burgess Meredith, mostly saving MAD Magazine time on the caricature) treating him like crap because he’s too old to be a contender.

After the first scene, Rocky’s done with boxing for the first act. There’s talk about it—folks being surprised Stallone won the fight—but the rest of the time is establishing the ground situation. Stallone’s got a crush on pet shop girl Talia Shire, who’s not necessarily not interested in the attention, and he’s best buddies with her drunken “lovable” asshole brother (Burt Young). Young wants a job as a leg-breaker, but Stallone doesn’t think he’s reliable enough. Into the second act, there’s a big implication Young’s trying to pawn Shire off on Stallone in exchange for a job hookup.

Young’s an asshole. They realize in the third act they can make him funny about it and give him some goofy reaction shots during the big fight, but it’s too late. It’s fine. He’s supposed to be an asshole, but he and Stallone’s arc is one of the film’s most rushed.

Just as Stallone and Shire kick off their tender but macho romance, he gets the chance of the lifetime. The world heavyweight champion of the world Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is looking for an unknown contender for a New Year’s Day fight. Weathers is celebrating the United States Bicentennial, wants to do something showy. Giving the underdog a shot. Now, we’ll find out later Weathers has not just never lost a fight, he’s never even been knocked down. Rocky has plenty of opportunities to exposition dump about Weathers’s record (the film does use TV news footage as a device, but Shire knows squat about boxing, and Stallone could tell her). Stallone’s a fan of Weathers, but it seems uninformed. In one of Rocky’s sincerest flexes, Stallone pushes back at his regular bartender Don Sherman’s regular racism about Black man Weathers. It’s also one of the most realistic—Stallone doesn’t say why he’s upset Sherman’s a racist and just bounces.

There’s a decent argument for Stallone not knowing how to verbalize it. He’s something of an uninformed philosopher king, lots of observations—he even writes jokes to tell Shire—and Rocky’s most shining moments are when Stallone ventures out into the world. He leaves the gym, the fight club, the bar, his “economically distressed” neighborhood, and participates in the world. Rocky will have several problems by the end, up to and including the last moments, but once it rings the bell in Stallone’s self-esteem character development arc, the movie’s basically won. It’s done the Stallone arc, it’s done the Stallone and Shire arc, it’s given Shire just the scantest amount of character moments on her own (it’s truly staggering how much the film puts on her; she’s charged with bringing it legitimacy). Like the rest of the film, the big fight’s got its problems (Stallone’s got a strategy, a foreshadowed strategy, but they make it coincidental), and its moments (despite uneven sound editing, Stallone and Weathers do have a real scene together amid the blows).

Technically, the film’s a sparsely mixed bag. Whenever director Avildsen actually has a good shot (he’s awful shooting in cramped spaces, which is about half of the movie), cinematographer James Crabe or one of his camera operators messes it up. There are some decent shots throughout the film, but they’re either outside, involve static camera placement, or in giant indoor spaces. Otherwise, it’s buyer beware. Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad’s editing is similarly hot and cold. It’s good for the sports movie, it’s atrocious on the dramatics. Young in particular will change head position and facial expression between his shots. Is it Young, is it Avildsen? Probably. But it’s also artless cutting.

Then the sports stuff is good.

Bill Conti’s score is one of the main stars, along with Stallone, Shire, and, to a lesser extent, Weathers. Weathers gives an unforgettable performance, but… he’s not, you know, particularly good. Stallone and Shire are good. Especially Shire. The supporting cast ranges. Meredith’s cartoonish and semi-pointless (it’s like no one told Stallone after he figured out the plot, he could improve it) until the movie remembers to tell us Meredith could’ve been a surrogate family to Stallone but didn’t because he’s an asshole too. One of the film’s other endearing subplots is Stallone’s good nature—his “friends” all want something from him, which he acknowledges and, once in the position to help, does so.

Except Shire, of course, which just makes them all the cuter. Though Stallone’s pushy advances age poorly (maybe if Avildsen directed them better), but Shire’s into it, so it’s fine… see what you made me say, movie? Do you see?

Anyway.

The film’s greatest unsung performance is Tony Burton. He’s Weathers’s trainer, who realizes Stallone might be good enough to get lucky, and Weathers better take the big fight more seriously. Weathers, spoiler, does not. Hence drama.

Thayer David plays Weathers’s Mr. Big manager. He and Meredith unfortunately don’t get a chance to do a caricature-off.

A shame we’ll never get to see it—the movie reminds everyone at least four times there won’t be a rematch.

The Karate Kid Part III (1989, John G. Avildsen)

There’s no way to talk about Karate Kid Part III without, pardon the expression, kicking it while it’s down. There are no good performances, no good technical aspects, no interesting writing, nothing. Pat Morita doesn’t humiliate himself, mostly because he seems disgusted at the whole thing, which is at least understandable.

The film takes place sometime after Part II, with Morita and Ralph Macchio returning from Okinawa in time for Macchio to start college. However, Macchio doesn’t start college; instead, he takes his tuition and starts a bonsai shop for Morita. The bonsai shop is ostensibly Morita’s life’s dream, forgetting the last movie when he was going to bring his long-lost love back to the States with him. They don’t address that change—nor how his old rival was going to rebuild their village, something Morita apparently paid for somehow—but they do mention Tamlyn Tomita had something better to do than show up for Part III. Another Macchio love interest who leaves him hanging just when the next movie’s about to start.

It opens Macchio up for a not-romance with Robyn Lively, who’s somehow exceptionally bad but nowhere near as bad as most of the performances. There’s no romance because Lively’s too young in real life to have almost thirty Macchio groping her, even though she’s seemingly playing older than him on screen. Also younger than Macchio but playing older than him is main villain Thomas Ian Griffith. Griffith’s an old Vietnam buddy of Martin Kove, who’s only occasionally in the movie because he had a real job at the time.

Kove’s better than anyone besides Morita in the movie, including Macchio, but he’s still far from good. He’s just not cartoonishly absurd like Griffith and the other bad guys. Those other bad guys are the bad karate kids; well, Sean Kanan (holy cow, he got another job after this movie; don’t let anyone tell you white guys don’t fail upward) is a karate kid. Jonathan Avildsen (director Avildsen gave his son a part, and Avildsen fils is one of the worst actors to appear in a studio theatrical release ever) and William Christopher Ford are apparently the teenage boys wealthy industrialist Griffith keeps around his house for beating up during his karate practice.

The movie’s first hour is all about Macchio and Morita trying to get the bonsai shop off the ground, but Kanan keeps beating up Macchio to get him to sign up for a karate tournament. It’s part of Griffith’s revenge plan. Then, after the bad karate kids tell Macchio—amongst other things—they’re going to rape Lively, Macchio relents and agrees to the tournament fight. He ends up training with Griffith because Morita doesn’t think you should do karate just for a tournament. It’s unclear what Morita thinks they should do about Kanan terrorizing them, but since the whole bonsai shop seems like something Macchio forces Morita into… maybe it’s just no big loss.

Again, Morita’s not engaging with this movie. In a film with occasionally phoned-in performances (they couldn’t bring Randee Heller back for actual scenes, so she cameos during a phone call), it’s not a surprise.

Macchio and Lively talk a whole lot, jabbering their way through scenes; Part III has a risible script, but Avildsen’s direction’s even worse than Robert Mark Kamen’s writing, which is a feat. Avildsen’s composition is uninspired, tedious, and rarely even middling, but his direction of the actors is a film crime. Maybe Morita’s supposed to be mirroring Avildsen’s attitude.

Whatever.

Terrible Bill Conti score.

Karate Kid Part III’s the pits. It’s mostly just Macchio convincing everyone the first movie was a fluke, and franchising it was a terrible, terrible mistake.

The Karate Kid Part II (1986, John G. Avildsen)

Towards the end of the first act, Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita have a potentially great scene. The best friends have traveled to Okinawa so Morita can see his dying father (Charlie Tanimoto, in a less than nothing part). Morita’s sad, pensively looking out at the ocean, and Macchio’s got some perspective to share. Macchio’s father died (at some point before the first movie), so now he’s the wiser one in the pair.

While it’s a big swing in a film of big swings, it’s also a good, unique big swing. And then Robert Mark Kamen can’t actually write the scene because he’s got nothing to say in it or any other part of The Karate Kid Part II. It’s a singularly floundering motion picture.

The first nine minutes of Part II recap and conclude the previous film, bringing back Martin Kove as the bad karate teacher. He’s abusing his loser students, and Morita has to intercede to save the day. Would it have worked better last time? It’d have had a point; there’s only so much they can do with it here because, since the first movie, Kid’s lost the female presence. Neither Elisabeth Shue (as Macchio’s girlfriend) nor Randee Heller (as Macchio’s mom) appears. Outside first movie footage. It’s okay, though, because Macchio will meet a new girl in Okinawa and the first movie barely had Heller, so a sequel would need her less. Especially since Macchio and Morita are globetrotting.

After the first movie wrap-up, Part II spends another ten minutes setting up Morita’s ground situation back in Okinawa. This film dumps Morita, the widower, which the previous film established and used to set up Macchio as a surrogate son. It doesn’t retcon it, just ignores it. Because Morita’s spent his entire life mooning over his girlfriend from teenage years, played by Nobu McCarthy. He had to run away from Okinawa and leave her because her arranged marriage husband-to-be Danny Kamekona wanted to fight Morita to the death. Oh, also, Kamekona was Morita’s best friend. And Tanimoto taught them both karate as kids because Morita insisted. It’s a bunch of setups with very little pay-off because Morita never actually gets anything to do. He gets to observe action sequences and do some terribly choreographed and shot karate, but his “returning home” arc happens primarily off-screen. Macchio sometimes sees it from afar, which just draws attention to it not being part of the movie.

Though if they did make it more part of the movie, Part II would probably bungle it, like Macchio’s romance with Tamlyn Tomita. Tomita and Macchio get several outing and date scenes, but their romance arc is wanting. Tomita’s got a lot to do—including play damsel in distress a couple times—she just doesn’t get a character to do it with. She does get some scenes with Macchio explaining the way the world works. Karate Kid Part II’s got a weird American jingoism going on. It’s like someone wanted to make negative commentary, but then none of the other creatives understood what was happening. It’s an embarrassing oversight.

The Tomita thing is a waste of time, at least as character development goes. Instead, it does its job as a walking tour forecasting the rest of the movie.

Yuji Okumoto plays the villain. He’s Kamekona’s best karate student and so starts picking fights with Macchio, with Macchio not understanding Okumoto’s not a rich kid bully, he’s a potential murderer. Okumoto puts up with a lot of silly with his character, and it’s impressive he can keep it together by the end.

Much of Karate Kid Part II plays like a TV show; the characters are thin, and the events are frequent.

There aren’t really any standout acting performances. Morita’s okay with what he’s got, but it’s not enough. Macchio’s a kid on an unexpected vacation, and sometimes it does feel like his movie, not often. Even the fight scene finish complicates things to take it away from Macchio and Morita’s relationship. It takes a back seat to Morita’s rekindling with McCarthy, which (again) is seen through Macchio from afar.

Not a good script, but even worse: lousy plotting.

Better anything technical would help. Avildsen’s direction is barely competent, with he and cinematographer James Crabe (who was so good on the first one) zooming in on all the action. Maybe wider shots would reveal the “Welcome to Hawaii” billboards giving away they’re not in Okinawa. Avildsen’s particularly bad with the fight scenes. Also, he appears to have told villain Kamekona to talk like Cookie Monster.

Bill Conti’s music is terrible, repetitive, and annoying. The omnipresent flute is near intolerable, and the only good bit of music sounds like leftovers from Conti’s F/X score.

The good guys are all sympathetic—Morita, Macchio, Tomita, McCarthy—but it’s a long movie with nothing going for it but sympathetic characters.

The Karate Kid (1984, John G. Avildsen)

The Karate Kid runs out of movie before it runs out of story. The film’s been steadily improving on its way to the third act, culminating in a showdown between Jersey transplant (to L.A.) Ralph Macchio and his bully, William Zabka. There’s a lot of angst to the rivalry; they first tussled when “alpha” Zabka caught Macchio flirting with his ex-girlfriend, Elisabeth Shue, but then it also turns out Zabka’s a rich kid, and Macchio’s not. The film’s first act is Zabka and his goons escalating their bullying—it’s assault real quick—before Macchio enlists the aid of his own karate expert, Pat Morita.

Actually, Morita saves Macchio when Zabka and his pals are trying to beat him to a pulp. Morita tries to handle it maturely, going with Macchio to confront Zabka’s teacher, only to discover he’s getting all the violence and aggression from that teacher, played by Martin Kove.

Zabka, Kove, and the rest of the goons are phantasmic villains in the second act (Morita says they’ll have a showdown at the local karate tournament, so no one can beat on Macchio until then), giving Macchio time to learn karate. And also have a rich girl, poor boy romance with Shue, which has its own foils before working just in time. It’s all right, though; Macchio and Shue—neither teenagers, both playing teenagers—are cute together, and Shue manages to imply a lot more character than Kid provides her.

Kid doesn’t provide anyone much character, really. Morita gets the most backstory. After spending the first half of the movie sometimes dispensing comic wisdom to Macchio, the film reveals his tragic history. However, it does mean Morita pretty much sat around for forty years waiting to play mentor to a random kid. It’s effective, however, because Macchio and Morita have great chemistry. It’s kind of the only good thing director Avildsen does in the film, which starts in a hurry and somehow manages to finish even faster, but the Macchio and Morita friendship is outstanding. Thanks to their on-screen rapport, not the writing of it. Robert Mark Kamen’s script doesn’t do character development. For the majority of the cast, they don’t even get character.

For instance, Macchio’s mother, Randee Heller, moved the two out to California so she could get a job at a computer start-up. Apparently, she ends up managing a restaurant without ever starting the computer job, but it doesn’t matter because she stops being in the movie for the second act. She shows up three-quarters of the way through the tournament in the third act, seemingly just so Macchio can act tough to her when injured. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even watch him compete.

Similarly, Macchio doesn’t have much of a character arc either, despite making an “only in the movies” best friend, learning karate, and dating Shue. The film takes place over three months; the first act speeds through that first month, then the next two comprise the second and third acts (there’s an inexplicable opening title card telling us it’s September, a device the film never employs again). Even though the film’s got its editing problems, it’s reasonably impressive how quickly they move things along at the beginning. When Macchio and Morita finally start their karate training plot, it feels like an entirely different movie (their friendship starts before the karate).

Acting-wise, Shue’s the easy best and only because she occasionally does something subtle. Macchio and Morita are likable, both flexing in broad roles, but they’re never really good. The script gives Macchio way too many mugging for the camera bits. Kove and Zabka are hiss-ready villains with no real depth, though at least they try a little with Zabka. But more because he’s a rich kid like Shue.

Good photography from James Crabe; it carries a lot of water for Avildsen’s bland direction. A competent but uninspired score from Bill Conti doesn’t help things, but it’s better than the pop soundtrack, which provides only one good montage backing (Young Hearts by Commuter). The rest of the songs are very trite eighties stuff.

The last finale’s a hurried, truncated mess, but Karate Kid could be a whole lot worse. Macchio and Morita more than make up for the rest of the film’s bumps, but they can’t help with the finish. Mainly because they’re not in it enough.

Joe (1970, John G. Avildsen)

Joe is a story of white male friendship. The Joe in the title is Peter Boyle, a racist working-class Vietnam vet. The film doesn’t open with Boyle though, it begins with Susan Sarandon. She’s a rich girl turned hippie who’s slumming with a drug-dealing boyfriend (Patrick McDermott) in the Village.

The “prologue” (for the entirety of the first act, Joe feels like a series of unconnected stage plays strung together) is about Sarandon and McDermott fighting, getting high, messing around, dealing, and so on. The present action of it is like forty-five minutes, hence the staginess. Norman Wexler’s dialogue isn’t good, Avildsen’s direction isn’t good, McDermott’s terrible, but at least Sarandon’s sympathetic. Everyone’s against her—Wexler, McDermott, but also Avildsen, whose best move in Joe will be objectifying young women from a particularly creepy, predatory angle while making it clear they’re in danger from creepy predators. It’s not much of a feat, but Avildsen’s direction is always lamentable, save maybe one shot of New York buildings (he also photographed). And maybe is a stretch. It’s just been so much dull direction—Joe is low budget, but Avildsen’s direction doesn’t innovate to compensate; it’s like watching an amateur soap opera most of the time.

Thanks to McDermott’s callousness, Sarandon ends up in the hospital, introducing parents Audrey Caire and Dennis Patrick to the story. They have to get her stuff and get into an argument on the apartment building stairs, which immediately turns Caire into a mean mom trope and Patrick into a confused but earnest dad. Caire’s never good though there are more times for her when it seems like she ought to be, and Joe’s just not working. She leaves Patrick to do it alone, and he gets into a fight with McDermott.

Notice we still haven’t gotten to Boyle? It takes Joe forever to get to that failed play—Boyle in a bar talking lots of racist shit to his fellow white men who aren’t comfortable with it but aren’t going to say anything because he’s a vet after all, and they’re all white aren’t they—but not just in the story. Avildsen pads the film throughout with lengthy sequences where Patrick walks around or cleans or packs or looks. About thirty percent of Joe is just Avildsen and editor George T. Norris intentionally boring the viewer.

Patrick heads to the bar to cool off after the apartment fight and meets Boyle. Now, when I said “lots of racist shit,” I mean lots. It’s Archie Bunker overdrive, with the N-word popping up every fourth word. Clearly, Boyle’s going for it in the performance. Sadly the only time he ever really rings true is when he’s opposite wife, K Callan.

Very recognizable Reid Cruickshanks plays the bartender in the scene and is more professional than most of the cast, supporting and main.

Anyway, fast forward a few days, and plot perturbations lead to Boyle and Patrick hanging out. They become an odd couple, rich guy Patrick, working-class guy Boyle; they’re both vets (it’s unclear if Patrick was in Vietnam or Korea or WWII), they’re both cruel, callous, racist, sexist, homophobic bigots. They also both like young women, which will sadly be the entire third act. They’re able to bond over being red-blooded American men; while Patrick never goes on a racist tirade, he really hates those hippies, something Boyle’s able to use as a touchstone. Bad things happening to hippies is good for the world.

Then there’s the pointless dinner scene where the riches and the poors get together in Queens, which forecasts a terrifying “All in the Family” variant. Callan’s worried about the house not being good enough for Boyle’s new moneyed pal, Patrick, who’s had to drag snooty wife Caire along. Caire picks up on Callan’s fretting and is condescendingly empathetic. But the better move is if Caire isn’t condescending, which Wexler and Avildsen miss; Caire seems to get it, Wexler knows the moment’s there, Avildsen’s oblivious. For Avildsen, the scene's all about getting Boyle close to boiling over. It's exploitative, but Avildsen somehow can't figure out how to do it.

Still awake? You might not be if you were watching the movie.

After the dinner, while talking about how manly Boyle makes him feel, Patrick upsets Sarandon, who runs away. So the third act is Patrick and Boyle looking for her in the Village and ending up at a hippie orgy. Their behavior there leads to sensational tragedy. Because nothing good is going to come from drunken resentful middle-aged white Republicans perving around young women. Though Joe takes it to a particularly exploitative finish.

Terribly directed exploitative too. Avildsen takes a big swing, and he doesn’t even seem to be holding a bat.

Joe was a big hit on release, commercially and critically; it’s inept drivel and incredible Avildsen ever got another gig. Though if anything should be about white men failing upward, it’s Joe.

The Karate Kid (1984, John G. Avildsen)

James Crabe’s photography gets The Karate Kid through the rough patches. The film’s incredibly uneven–Bill Conti’s score initially seems like it’ll be a plus, ends up being a minus, and the editing is strange. Director Avildsen, with two other editors, can’t seem to figure out how to cut the climatic fight sequence. Like many sequences in the film, it’s set to a pop song (only one of those sequences works out), but it’s almost like Avildsen didn’t consider how to cut the film together when shooting.

But, like I said, Crabe’s there to make up for Avildsen’s questionable composition. There are a few times he goes for painfully obvious symbolism–poor Ralph Macchio dejectedly walking away alone–but mostly Avildsen goes for pedestrian. Crabe’s photography and William J. Cassidy’s production design give the film most of its personality.

The rest of the personality comes from Macchio and Pat Morita. Robert Mark Kamen’s script is far from great (and not particularly close to good either), but Macchio and Morita’s relationship does keep the film together through its lengthy runtime. Kamen and Avildsen prefer telling the story in summary, which makes it hard to care about Macchio right off. They seem to understand and loose William Zabka to mercilessly bully Macchio from the second or third scene.

There are some nice moments, eventually–not for a while–with Elisabeth Shue and Macchio.

Macchio’s performance is more appealing than good, ditto poor Morita (who’s basically playing Yoda). A better finish would’ve helped.