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Critics Consensus: The Next Karate Kid is noteworthy for giving audiences the chance to see a pre-Oscars Hilary Swank, but other than a typically solid performance from Pat Morita, this unnecessary fourth installment in the franchise has very little to offer.
Critic Consensus: The Next Karate Kid is noteworthy for giving audiences the chance to see a pre-Oscars Hilary Swank, but other than a typically solid performance from Pat Morita, this unnecessary fourth installment in the franchise has very little to offer.
All Critics (27) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (2) | Rotten (25) | DVD (1)
The Next Karate Kid is harmless as children's entertainment, but for 104 very long minutes, there isn't a recognizable human being in sight.
The overt message of any Karate Kid movie: Don't fight unless you absolutely have to. The implicit message: You'll always have to. Let the smitings begin!
While the message that a girl can defend herself against the boys threatening her is a good one, it's lost in a movie where the bullies look like Mussolini's bodyguards and where Julie waits for her boyfriend and Miyagi to come to her defense.
Only the reasonably-appealing performances of Morita and newcomer Swank keep it all from becoming even more of a loser.
Not that girls will go see this or boys will care.
The franchise is still kicking -- but not very high.
An irrelevant foot note in the "Karate Kid" series that can be overlooked if only for being so vanilla.
A few pre-prom dance lessons are the only significant departure from the tried and tested chop-socky formula, although Michael Ironside is good value as Swank's sinister gym teacher.
Amid its familiar banalities and formula twists, The Next Karate Kid comes up with one new idea for dealing with difficult American teen-agers: ship 'em off to a Buddhist monastery for two weeks!
This desperate attempt to keep the franchise alive and kicking resorts to a backhanded kind of political correctness: introducing a surly teenage girl karate expert who goes around talking about "kicking butt."
Swank and Morita make a personable pair, enough so that we don't miss Macchio. The monks exude a benevolent presence in a film less trivial than it could have been.
Violent sequel doesn't benefit from gender change.
Fourth and final entry in the series is a mess from start to finish, one that never should have been made. I never got the fact why they kept making films to the original; they constantly recycled ideas with every sequel, and never did anything new with the formula. With this final entry, we get a change of a lead character, who is a girl played by Hilary Swank. Swank would go on to star in far better films, and this among her worst. At least it was during her time when she was honing her skills as an actress and was still a rising talent. Luckily she would become one of Hollywood's greatest actresses. The franchise by now has clearly run out of ideas, and this final entry has nothing to show for it. I think that The Karate Kid should have been a standalone film, and each sequel simply didn't offer anything good or original. I think the filmmakers overplayed the themes of previous films far too much and it lost its meaning and made it uninteresting to watch. Hilary Swank is a great actress, however this is a film where she doesn't deliver, and you see how she's struggling with the bad, predictable and recycled material. Stick with the first film, and avoid all these bad sequels. Luckily, The Next Karate Kid was the final entry in the series and with good reason. The remake would be much better, and offer something that was missing since the original, which was a compelling, truly inspiring story. The New Karate Kid is a film that should be forgotten after you've had the misfortune of seeing it.
Super Reviewer
Funny and i found it much more entertaining than the other 3 movies, mainly because miyagi has much more screen time and is much funnier
The same kinda story but with a new apprentice, enter a girl who needs Miyagi's help with the usual bully problems. Yes its the same but it still works well, Morita makes it really but Swank is very good and looks like she can do the moves. It is one story too far really but it just gets by, the plot involving Morita's background and Swanks father being old war buddies does actually work, in the end its a kids film but much much more and soo much better than most. Better than you would expect.
I don't really know why anyone felt the need to make the female version of The Karate Kid, but this was about as good as you could expect. The acting from Hilary Swank is fine as well as Pat Morita, it's just nowhere close to the original series in terms of overall quality and originality. This is a little bit more corny and less powerful. Again, it's better than you might expect but certainly not good.
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