The Real Star

Beginning in 1984 Hollywood produced a couple of pictures about a kid who was not exactly fitting in to his environment. It was called the Karate Kid. I always thought that Ralph Macchio was the glue that held the movie together. Macchio was a kid who grew by learning karate. But we recently watched the Next Karate Kid which was one of Hillary Swank's movies. What you see very quickly is that the real star of these series was Pat Morita, who played the karate instructor, Mr. Miagi.

Over the holidays, we saw a preview for a new version of the genre - this time set in China with Jackie Chan. It will be interesting to see whether this new generation can carry off what Morita and his supporting cast was able to do so well two decades ago.