Well, my friends, it’s after Labor Day. Time to stop wearing white shoes according to Serial Mom, and time to wrap up the summer retrospective according to me. Some interesting movies that were released at the end of the summer include Richard Rush’s COLOR OF NIGHT (yet another legendarily hated movie at the time time, I thought it was kind of interestingly crazy when I watched it years later) and Roger Avary’s KILLING ZOE (which I’ve always sort of liked but never nearly as much as I wanted to), both released on the 19th. The 26th gave us another Tarantino-connected movie that was a huge deal at the time, Oliver Stone’s NATURAL BORN KILLERS.

I previously reviewed that one so thoroughly that I not only covered the movie, but the earlier script and the making of book, so I’m not going to rehash it much here. I do want to note that Oliver Stone was one of the directors most associated with boomer self analysis – rightly or wrongly, his movies were a big part of the way people my age conceived of the Vietnam War, the JFK assassination, and of course The Doors. But here in the summer of GUMP he was more interested in being contemporary, cutting edge, of-the-moment. I found the movie’s hyperactive collage style annoying at the time, but I can respect it more now, and it was obviously influential for other movies I initially and/or still find annoying like DOMINO and CRANK. His choice to recruit Trent Reznor to produce the soundtrack album proves that the movie is more Lollapalooza than Woodstock. It was also an early foray into cinema for the future Academy Award winning composer (though of course we all know he was in Paul Schrader’s LIGHT OF DAY in 1987, plus “Head Like a Hole” was in CLASS OF 1999 and PRAYER OF THE ROLLERBOYS and “Dead Souls” was in THE CROW).

This finale to the Summer of ’94 series will focus on a triptych of movies with this sort of generational torch passing as part of their plot. They are stories about young people and the lessons they learn from older mentors.

First up is THE NEXT KARATE KID (released August 12th), a widely rejected sequel I’ve seen a surprising number of times considering its mediocrity. I’ve also reviewed it already, but I thought it would be worth revisiting to consider as a forerunner of today’s legacy sequels. The world had moved on from the popular trilogy of KARATE KID films, all directed by John G. Avildsen, written by Robert Mark Kamen and centering on Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso. Now, five years after THE KARATE KID PART III (which was less popular but more awesome/ridiculous), they tried to do a bit of a refresh on the series by bringing back Mr. Miyagi (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, last seen in EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES) but with a different setting and student. A girl, even!

It happens because he’s visiting his old friend Louisa Pierce (Constance Towers, SHOCK CORRIDOR, THE NAKED KISS), widow of a WWII buddy who saved his life. She’s having a hard time getting along with her orphaned granddaughter Julie (Hilary Swank, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER), so Miyagi convinces her to go stay at his place for a few weeks while he looks after the kid.

I think the main thing I find amusing about this movie, but also the main thing that makes it not very good, is that they put way more emphasis on Julie being grouchy than likable. I think it’s pretty believable how rude she is to her grandma and Miyagi at first, and how often she’s kind of a whiny idiot, but in a movie it gets comical. Also in one part I believe she calls Domino’s “Domino’s Pizzas.” But Miyagi is still such a lovable character that he balances it pretty well and makes the movie (to me) watchable.

Julie is almost a total loner – I say almost because there’s an ADR part where someone says hi to her when she gets to school and I wondered who this unseen friend was. Most of her time is spent looking after a hawk named Angel she found shot (!) on school grounds, has bandaged and secretly living in a cage on the roof of the school. She breaks into the school at night to check on her.

The boys in the school are cast like an ‘80s slasher movie – if I had to guess “is this guy in high school or is he over 30?” I would go for the latter every time. The main boy character is Eric (Chris Conrad, AIRBORNE), who sort of bothers her into eventually hanging out with him and liking him enough to trust him with the secret of Angel. He’s not as bad as the other boys at school, who straight up bully and sexually harass her, plus frame her for smoking. Instead of a football team or similar, the jock boys join a team of fascist stormtroopers called Alpha Elite. Ex-military, current cop and person who definitely should not be allowed to influence children Colonel Dugan (Michael Ironside, RED SCORPION 2) is their instructor, he teaches them to fight, tells them if they catch someone littering to force them to eat it, and exerts influence over the principal. He trains his troops out in public, even beating them up on the field, allowing Miyagi to witness, intervene, and get threatened.

I really would like to know more about Alpha Elite. How did this happen? What do the other kids in school think? Like, do they have an equivalent to cheerleaders? And did screenwriter Mark Lee (FORTUNES OF WAR) originally envision this as the KARATE KID sequel that takes place in a dystopian future?

The bad guys in this are generally more exaggerated movie bad guys than in the Daniel-San trilogy. For example, there’s a scene where they stop at a rural gas station and some rednecks who hang out there intimidate Julie for being a girl and start a fight with Miyagi for the crime of calming their growling doberman. (They lose the fight, of course.)

The way Julie gets involved in karate is pretty funny. She runs out into the street without looking and almost gets run over by a pizza delivery man (Wayne Chou) but she jumps onto the hood of the car in what Miyagi calls tiger position. When she later admits that her dad used to teach her karate Miyagi explains that he taught her grandfather who taught her father. She already knows Miyagi-do!

He starts giving her small lessons in exchange for doing her overdue school assignments. The wax on/wax off method is referenced, but the big new one is having her babysit some neighbor kids who belt her with Nerf products. When she gets suspended from school he brings her to stay at a Buddhist temple where she learns lessons about the sanctity of life (via bugs) and how to do a jump kick from one rock to another. For what it’s worth Swank does some pretty cool looking acrobatics – I was thinking she must’ve been a dancer, but research tells me it was gymnastics.

The monks mostly don’t talk and are lovable pals like the ones in LITTLE BUDDHA. The abbot is played by Arsenio “Sonny” Trinidad, last seen in THE SHADOW. Julie becomes much more fun to be around now that she has a bunch of friends (one bird, one boy, Mr. Miyagi and these monks).

It tries to deal with dads-raising-teenage-girls stuff, like Miyagi goes to buy her a prom dress. The woman at the shop is non-judgmental whens she thinks he’s buying it for himself, but I’m unclear why Julie wasn’t there with him. She’s nervous about going to the prom because “What if they started doing an old fashioned waltz or something? I don’t know how to waltz.” Miyagi invents a waltz-karate fusion to teach her, though he could’ve just told her “uh… I don’t think you will have to waltz at the prom in the year 1994.”

For reasons I don’t understand, members of the Alpha Elite bungee jump down from the ceiling during the prom. Everybody gets upset.

Oddly/interestingly, there’s no karate tournament element at all. Instead, the head asshole of the Alpha Elite, Ned (Michael Cavalieri, SHOWDOWN), is jealous of Eric dating Julie and breaks the windows on his beloved restored Oldsmobile while he’s dropping her off before curfew. This all leads to a showdown at the docks (previously mentioned as the make out spot?) where Colonel Dugan encourages his teenage students to blow up Eric’s car and then duel him. Julie decides she wants to fight Ned, which Eric thinks is a bad idea but Miyagi (in an outrageous case of poor judgment not set up by the movie at all) believes she’s ready and lets her do it. Luckily it goes okay, but man her Grandma would’ve been pissed if she got her skull kicked in. Miyagi also fights the Colonel. It’s fun but obviously very, very dumb.

I don’t mind dumbness – part III is kind of my favorite. But the overall look and feel of this is just not as cinematic as the other ones. Despite working with the veteran d.p. Laszlo Kovacs (EASY RIDER, FREEBIE AND THE BEAN), director Christopher Cain (THE PRINCIPAL, YOUNG GUNS) doesn’t come up with a good look or a way to establish any flavor to the Massachusetts setting the way Avildsen did with the San Fernando Valley. (Unless a teenage girl tying up her shirt to expose her bellybutton at all times is a Massachusetts thing.) There are a few nice shots, but it mostly looks generic.

Most ‘90s touches: the jeans everybody wears, and the scene where Julie practices katas to The Cranberries.

There’s one off-handed mention of Daniel-San and I’d say two not-intrusive callbacks: the wax on/wax off reference and using a headband like Daniel-San’s as a blindfold. I like that it’s pretty separate from the others. It makes sense that Miyagi would have other shit going on in his life. And they really don’t get into it at all but the idea of a Japanese-American WWII vet facing off with a neo-fascist white soldier/cop is pretty cool. Despite the Alpha Team being ten times bigger shit faces than Johnny Lawrence, they similarly grow a conscience at the end when the Colonel says to “Finish him off.” Guy thinks he’s Shang Tsung.

I don’t know if it occurred to me before that Swank was mentored to fight by Mr. Miyagi and 2000s Clint Eastwood. Two of the great old man icons. I do think the idea of doing a separate tale with Miyagi in a different setting and teaching a girl was a good one, though I don’t think society accepted it as one at the time. I think the perception was that it was cheap to make one without Daniel-San, and maybe I’m naive but I didn’t get the sense at the time that people rejected the replacement for being a girl. It was just conventional wisdom that the series had run its course and they were trying to shove another one down our throats when no one was interested.

So it got horrible reviews and minimal box office. It’s interesting that long after Morita’s death a different approach to a followup, the streaming series Cobra Kai, ended up being one of the best legacy sequels ever (besides CREED, also based on an Avildsen movie). One thing that’s fun about the show is how it’s connected to characters and incidents even from part III. Each season I’ve hoped for them to bring in Julie Pierce, and there are still ten more episodes before it ends. I 100% believe that the makers of the show have tried to make it happen, but with Swank having recently starred in her own show and given birth to twins I think it probly won’t happen. Unless it’s a tiny cameo. We’ll see.

There’s also an upcoming KARATE KID theatrical film seemingly unconnected to the show, teaming Daniel-San with Jackie Chan’s character from the 2010 remake to train a new student, so the spirit of THE NEXT KARATE KID is still sort of alive. But its biggest legacy is of course being the first starring role for future two-time-best-actress-winner Swank, plus an early role for one “Walt Goggins” as “Charlie,” an Alpha Elite thug with a couple lines here and there.

FRESH (released August 24th) is a much better movie that I’ve also reviewed before. This one I remember seeing at an early screening at the Harvard Exit. I didn’t get one, but I remember them giving out cassette copies of the soundtrack, which is apparently “inspired by the film” because it’s a bunch of Wu-Tang and Grandmaster Flash and Cold Crush Brothers that’s not in the movie. I remember talk about how writer/director Boaz Yakin deliberately chose Stewart Copeland to score it so it would sound unlike other “hood” films. It’s weird how few actual songs are in the movie, and the way the score contrasts with the imagery sometimes gives it a bit of a Spike Lee feel, though it’s more of a gritty crime movie than Spike would usually be interested in.

This is the story of a 13 or 14 year old kid named Michael (first timer Sean Nelson, later in STAKE LAND), whose tag is Fresh but only his friends can call him that. This is one of those holy shit young actor performances, and he won awards at Sundance and from the Independent Spirit Awards. On his way to school Fresh picks up and delivers baggies of heroin for the gangster Esteban (Giancarlo Esposito, NIGHT ON EARTH). He’s the only kid doing this, and they say Esteban only has him around because he’s hot on his sister Nichole (N’Bushe Wright in her second movie, after ZEBRAHEAD), but this kid knows what he’s doing and is not afraid to call adults on trying to rip him off (which happens multiple times a day).

I remembered Fresh outsmarting all these drug gangs, pulling a YOJIMBO on them as a way to escape the life, but I actually forgot how harsh it gets on the way there. There’s a bigger body count than I remembered, including both child and animal death. This is the first time I’ve watched it and felt a little uncomfortable about it being a white director – the idea of a guy so monstrous he murders a young basketball prodigy in broad daylight for beating him, and some of the dialogue where Nichole degrades herself, seem a little much when I think about that. But mostly I think it’s a very good crime film with the unique aspect of this stoic kid at the center of it, executing his plan without explaining it to the audience or anyone else. We never really know what he’s up to until he starts telling people things we know aren’t true and we can see what he’s setting up.

Meanwhile, the various criminals call Fresh “little man” and names like that, talking about him having a future, basically grooming him to grow up like them. You can see how it would make him feel cool and grown up to get respect from these guys, which is how his friend Chuckie (Luis Lantigua, one episode of Law & Order) wants to feel. He’s the most memorable supporting character, an obnoxious little loud mouth who fucks everything up by getting a gun and trying to be a tough guy. He’s like a comic relief sidekick who dooms himself by thinking he’s the Tupac-in-JUICE character. I think it’s still Fresh’s fault Chuckie gets (spoiler) killed but I like the coldness of putting his friend out there as bait, knowing he won’t be able to resist bragging about working for Esteban.

I think the aspect I appreciated more than usual this time was the small but crucial subplot about Fresh meeting to play chess in the park with his mostly estranged alcoholic father, played by Samuel L. Jackson (well known from JUNGLE FEVER, JURASSIC PARK, etc. and just about to explode with PULP FICTION). He’s a deadbeat but he thinks he’s Furious Styles, giving Fresh tough love and harsh, metaphorical lessons through chess. Trying to toughen him up even though he never shows any signs of vulnerability. We know Fresh takes it to heart by his habit of using a chessboard to mark the progress of his plan.

In the last scene (spoiler) he’s achieved checkmate, taken out multiple drug crews and found a way for himself and his sister to escape the projects. But he had to get people killed, including friends, and (for some reason) felt he had to kill his dog, and now instead of feeling relieved and victorious he sits down in front of his father and the tears start streaming. I think what’s really powerful about it is the way his dad looks taken aback, he doesn’t do his usual stern father thing. He looks to me like he has some recognition that maybe he taught him wrong. At least that’s how I read it this time.

I also really like Fresh’s relationship with Nichole – you don’t usually see it in movies but yes, there are boys who really look up to an older sister, and I like how protecting her is the most important thing in the world to him even though she doesn’t reciprocate.

FRESH was distributed by Miramax and produced by Tarantino’s guy Lawrence Bender (who cameos as a drug buyer), and it was well reviewed, but it must’ve gotten a really limited release. It only made $8 million and isn’t nearly as well known as many indies of the era, but I think it’s better than most.

Definitely the craziest and dumbest movie we’ll be discussing today is the summer-ender MILK MONEY (released August 31st). I know I’d heard before that this was an insane movie, and that turns out to be correct, though not that fun of a type of insane. But get this: the premise is that three hang-out-together-in-a-treehouse aged boys (Michael Patrick Carter, Brian Christopher and Adam LaVorgna) are curious about women so they raise enough money to ride their bikes into “the city” and hire a prostitute to get naked in front of them. Just to get a peek. They first ask a random woman if she’s a prostitute and get slapped, then a guy with a backwards hat (because he’s streetwise) tries to rob them in a parking garage and they’re rescued by V (Melanie Griffith, CHERRY 2000), who’s now out of money and going to get beat up because she gets ditched by her john.

I’m not saying I’d want to see this, but if it was a gritty portrayal of sex workers and she was some junkie or something I could buy her agreeing to take her clothes off for three angel-faced suburban boys. It would be fucked up and tragic but she’d take the money. But this movie believes V can do that and it’ll be cute and she can still be a normal responsible lady who’s just in some bad circumstances. She feels sorry for them after they get their bikes stolen so she takes her pimp (Casey Siemaszko, THREE O’CLOCK HIGH)’s car to give them a ride home, then the car breaks down so the kid lets her live in his treehouse, tells his weirdo science teacher dad (Ed Harris, THE TRUMAN SHOW) that she’s a math tutor, and it turns into a romantic comedy about a gal from the city getting by in a cozy little wholesome town. Also it’s about Dad trying to save some nearby wetlands so basically it’s THE GOONIES with prostitution instead of piracy. It’s even produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, no joke.

The kid uses V as a prop in a sex ed class oral presentation, Ed Harris punches out another parent from school who recognizes V because he’s one of her clients, she teaches the kid how to dance, they blow up a mob boss played by Malcolm McDowell (between CYBORG 3 and STAR TREK GENERATIONS) inside his car, and V uses stolen money to buy the wetlands and an ice cream shop and stay in town like the end of a Hallmark movie. Anne Heche has a small part as another prostitute who mostly sits around saying ditzy things.

There’s a certain amount of “can you believe this shit?” appeal, but that’s about it. The questions the boys have about women, the way they ask them and the way they’re answered are neither believable or compelling, in my opinion. I believe the Next Karate Kid and Fresh will both contribute more to the world and their communities than this trio of potential sex offenders.

The writer is a rookie named John Mattson. Amazingly, it was a hot spec script that sold to Paramount for $1.1 million. Then he was sued because his agent told Dino De Laurentiis they could have it for a million. His only credits after this are FREE WILLY 2 and 3. Now he writes short stories. I would too.

Joe Dante (fresh off of MATINEE) was attached to direct, but they wanted to pay him below his usual rate and shoot it non-union in Canada so he quit, replaced by Richard Benjamin (CITY HEAT).

Janet Maslin had a good line about this one: “MILK MONEY may be the first brainless American comedy that deserves to be remade by the French.” Like so many movies in this series it got extremely harsh reviews and a Razzie nomination. This time I don’t object to the bad reviews, but as always the Razzies can suck it.

* * *

Well, pals, that is the end of my summer ’94 retrospective. I appreciate you for reading along with some or all of it. I’m honestly happy for it to be over, it was not the best summer of movies, actually kinda like the summer we’re currently experiencing. But as always I enjoyed doing a little time travel and having an excuse to watch a bunch of movies I never would’ve watched otherwise, some of them quite good.

This is one of the rare summer retrospectives – 1998 was another one – where the smaller/indie movies were overall more rewarding to me than the big summer ones. Yes, I love SPEED, and I like THE SHADOW and THE CROW, and there are some other okay explosion movies. But the ones I got most out of were SERIAL MOM, EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, MI VIDA LOCA, BARCELONA, plus the import EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN. And at least on this viewing I’d say my very favorite movie of the summer is a studio movie but an auteurist one much closer to the above list than, like THE FLINTSTONES and shit. It’s Spike Lee’s CROOKLYN. Great movie. Go watch it.

A few other superlatives

Most Seattle footage: LITTLE BUDDHA

Most surprisingly okay: RENAISSANCE MAN, LASSIE

Biggest surprise by far: Penelope Spheeris’ THE LITTLE RASCALS. I still can’t believe how much I liked that one. This was all worth it for them rascals.

And I count 16 movies between April and August that I remember seeing in theaters that year.

Thanks again everybody, I hope you had a good time, let me know your thoughts.