Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

Every kid I know either wanted to know karate or claimed they did know it just before embarrassing the crap out of themselves and breaking their hand on a fresh piece of lumber. I was the latter.

I remember running around the neighborhood playing tag with friends when I suddenly realized everyone had disappeared. While a lack of supervision back then often led to kids randomly disappearing all the time, I found it strange they all disappeared at once except for me. What did they have that I didn’t? Well it turns out they all went into one kid’s house because The Karate Kid was on tv. Since I was “it” no one thought to tell me. Typical.

I’d seen the ending of this film about a dozen times but never really saw it all the way through until a few years back. It’s like a love letter to 80’s nostalgia without knowing it’s a love letter to 80’s nostalgia… which makes it good because it’s genuine and not self aware. It wasn’t trying too hard. It wasn’t trying to be nostalgic at all. I don’t know much about Cobra Kai yet but do we really need new shows with an elderly Ralph Machio so we may indulge in nostalgic feelings or can we just watch the original again? In my experience thus far most things cashing in on nostalgia kind of sucks anyhow. Again, I’ve not seen Cobra Kai so, maybe it’s the exception.

The Karate Kid has all the good feelings and underdog story tropes to make it a timeless classic anyhow, even without the nostalgia. I can’t think of a single underdog story that I don’t like. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any stories that aren’t underdog stories in one way or another. That might explain why I generally like most films I see. Oh! The Chronicles of Riddick. That one was not an underdog story. That’s the only one. Pretty sure.