On Friday night, a few hundred Portlanders watched The Karate Kid while wearing their slash goggles.
Holy crap, there’s a lot in that flick that can be read in ways the filmmakers DID NOT intend. That is, if you’re a pervert, like a lot of us that night, and you’re willing to see sexual innuendo in many places. There’s Daniel on his hands and knees sanding Mr. Miyagi’s deck, and Mr. Miyagi’s shadow starts to loom right behind him, and hello. Even though neither Daniel nor Mr. Miyagi is my type.
The comments and “woo hoos!” moved screening host Bobby “Fatboy” Roberts to yell “You guys are RAPING my CHILDHOOD!”
(This is not new. In Living Color suggested this all the way back in its first installment of “Men On Film.” So maybe a lot of childhoods have been raped in the past three decades.)
We had fun at The Karate Kid, because all kidding aside, it’s a fun, feel-good flick. If you don’t like Pat Morita, something’s wrong with you. Ralph Macchio is a credible Everykid/bully target (and see him trimming the bonsai tree? Yeah, he’s good with his hands AGAIN WITH THE INNUENDO, CHRIS, OY, STOP IT). I’ve long preferred Elisabeth Shue in Adventures in Babysitting to here, probably because she gets to be so kick-ass in it (“Don’t fuck with the babysitter!”), but here she’s also really cute, lovable and likeable. The work (and work, and work) Daniel has to do, which makes him stew more and more and not realize he’s learning karate skills, is a good running gag. The songs and Bill Conti score are still catchy, at least that Eighties kind of catchy. And pay attention to the Cobra Kai student-bullies, because you can tell as the film progresses that they realize how much of a bully and jerk their dojo master is, and that something’s wrong with that. They actually get a character arc! Remember who gives Daniel the trophy at the end!
A welcome returning thing was Fatboy’s clip reel, something he hasn’t been able to do (Friday and the one music video he showed excepted) the last few months. There’ve been episodes of Battlestar Galactica or a band on-stage or a long, long film like The Godfather for a Late Night Movie, and that made less time for that extra. But Fatboy likes to make those, so before we watched The Karate Kid, we saw this*, and this**, and this***, and this****, and this*****.
Oh, and the audience popped at Cort and Fatboy’s announcement of what the July KUFO Midnight Movie’s going to be. I’m not announcing it yet, but…it’s going to be special. It’s also going to be a Christmas-in-July charity screening, so the ticket price will be $5 going to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, but the film will be worth the ticket price.
Want to know what we saw without clicking on the links? They’re:
*the trailer to 1995’s Mortal Kombat
**the karate face-planting guy
***the trailer to 1988’s Bloodsport (whoa, Forest Whitaker?!)
****one of the G.I. Joe PSAs, re-dubbed to become sick and wrong
*****the trailer to 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
ETA: Hey! More Karate Kid thoughts, let me show you them.
Holy crap, there’s a lot in that flick that can be read in ways the filmmakers DID NOT intend. That is, if you’re a pervert, like a lot of us that night, and you’re willing to see sexual innuendo in many places. There’s Daniel on his hands and knees sanding Mr. Miyagi’s deck, and Mr. Miyagi’s shadow starts to loom right behind him, and hello. Even though neither Daniel nor Mr. Miyagi is my type.
The comments and “woo hoos!” moved screening host Bobby “Fatboy” Roberts to yell “You guys are RAPING my CHILDHOOD!”
(This is not new. In Living Color suggested this all the way back in its first installment of “Men On Film.” So maybe a lot of childhoods have been raped in the past three decades.)
We had fun at The Karate Kid, because all kidding aside, it’s a fun, feel-good flick. If you don’t like Pat Morita, something’s wrong with you. Ralph Macchio is a credible Everykid/bully target (and see him trimming the bonsai tree? Yeah, he’s good with his hands AGAIN WITH THE INNUENDO, CHRIS, OY, STOP IT). I’ve long preferred Elisabeth Shue in Adventures in Babysitting to here, probably because she gets to be so kick-ass in it (“Don’t fuck with the babysitter!”), but here she’s also really cute, lovable and likeable. The work (and work, and work) Daniel has to do, which makes him stew more and more and not realize he’s learning karate skills, is a good running gag. The songs and Bill Conti score are still catchy, at least that Eighties kind of catchy. And pay attention to the Cobra Kai student-bullies, because you can tell as the film progresses that they realize how much of a bully and jerk their dojo master is, and that something’s wrong with that. They actually get a character arc! Remember who gives Daniel the trophy at the end!
A welcome returning thing was Fatboy’s clip reel, something he hasn’t been able to do (Friday and the one music video he showed excepted) the last few months. There’ve been episodes of Battlestar Galactica or a band on-stage or a long, long film like The Godfather for a Late Night Movie, and that made less time for that extra. But Fatboy likes to make those, so before we watched The Karate Kid, we saw this*, and this**, and this***, and this****, and this*****.
Oh, and the audience popped at Cort and Fatboy’s announcement of what the July KUFO Midnight Movie’s going to be. I’m not announcing it yet, but…it’s going to be special. It’s also going to be a Christmas-in-July charity screening, so the ticket price will be $5 going to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, but the film will be worth the ticket price.
Want to know what we saw without clicking on the links? They’re:
*the trailer to 1995’s Mortal Kombat
**the karate face-planting guy
***the trailer to 1988’s Bloodsport (whoa, Forest Whitaker?!)
****one of the G.I. Joe PSAs, re-dubbed to become sick and wrong
*****the trailer to 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
ETA: Hey! More Karate Kid thoughts, let me show you them.
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chris_walsh- Chris Walsh
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(No kidding, I considered having the only text be "I"...)