The Karate Kid Part II
The Karate Kid Part II
Daniel accompanies his mentor, Mr. Miyagi, to Miyagi's childhood home in Okinawa. Miyagi visits his dying father and confronts his old rival, while Daniel falls in love and inadvertently makes a new rival of his own.
James Saenz reviewedJune 3, 2025
watch out!— bd wong jump scare.
this is pretty bad, a massive step down from the original. it’s carried by the goodwill that daniel and mr. miyagi garnered in the first film, as well as pat morita’s weighty performance. it’s also not nearly as fetishistic or appropriative of japanese culture as one would expect from this time period and premise, but i suppose that’s not necessarily praise for the film as much as it’s recognition of how low the bar is. there’s still a lot of stuff that feels implicitly racist or misguided (like the incessant mentioning of honor), but i guess you could say that their hearts were in the right place.
they did my girl tamlyn tomita dirty with that fuck ass hairdo!! those baby hairs and bangs were in her face and fucking up the vibes. the acting (aside from pat morita, ralph macchio, and nobu mccarthy) is some of the worst i’ve ever seen; just some absolutely abysmal and stilted line reads. i blame a lot of that on the direction and the premise of the film. like, why so many native okinawans on the actual island would speak english a majority of the time is frustratingly baffling; clearly it’s because the film was made for an english speaking audience, but within the context of the narrative it makes less than zero sense. it also lacks the solid narrative structure of the original, which makes for poor pacing and mostly inert scenes that prevent any possibility of audience investment; daniel and mr. miyagi also feel like very static characters here, which is a massive problem when they’re the protagonists.
the final fight, while narratively more brutal than anything we’ve seen up to this point, lacks the visceral pain we saw daniel endure during the karate tournament. it also feels so awkwardly tacked on to have a bombastic ending, one last desperate attempt to retain the audience’s attention while trying to bring some semblance of a character arc to daniel after mr. miyagi had his wrapped up a few scenes prior.
the best part of the film is the prolonged tea ceremony scene— that’s honestly great romance storytelling.