My kids are 6 and 3, and last night they were finally introduced to that all-time cinematic ass-kicker, The Karate Kid.
I can’t help thinking of the line from There’s Something About Mary, when Pat Heely says to Mary, “I just miss the classics, y’know, like The Karate Kid or Harold and Maude.” You laugh, but in my mind The Karate Kid is classic. Hell, think of all the great lines:
• Wax on, Wax off.
• You pretty OK, too.
• Get him a body bag! Yeah!
• Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything.
• Danny: Hey, what kind of belt do you have? Miyagi: Canvas. JC Penney, $3.98. You like?
As Bill Simmons writes about in his brilliant ode to the Karate Kid trilogy, the movies are all absolutely ludicrous. But the first one is equally gripping. The final fight scene grabs me every time, Elizabeth Shue is the girl I wanted to date at age 15, Danny is the spindly kid in all of us, fighting the bullies bent on being anuses.
And now Emmett, my 3-year-old, insists on saying “Wax on, wax off”—to everything.
