Surprisingly, The Karate Kid packs more of an earnest punch than a good chunk of today's inspirational dramas, a solid teen flick that teaches the virtues of patience and respect without clumsily wielding its commentary like a four-year-old with a sledgehammer. The movie stars Ralph Macchio, William Zabka and Pat Morita.

As a child of the '80s and self-professed movie buff, I'm ashamed to say that before this year, I had never seen The Karate Kid. I guess repeat viewings of The Wizard and Flight of the Navigator took top priority when I was a wee one. I had my fears that this would be one of those dated flicks that would've been best to have seen two decades ago, whose flaws are all the more evident to someone having tacked on a few years of age and movie watching experience.

Daniel LaRusso (Macchio) is your average teenager, a Jersey kid who won't let his mom forget how ticked he is at having to relocate from the Garden State and all the way to California. His bitterness only gets worse after starting school and quickly making enemies with a jock (Zabka) and his posse of token '80s movie bullies. The jerks, also students at a local karate dojo, take part in regularly beating the stuffing out of poor Daniel, until our intrepid hero decides enough is enough and it's time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

But instead of going all Sonny Chiba on their posteriors, Daniel learns the true art of karate from Mr. Miyagi (the late, great Noriyuki "Pat" Morita), his apartment's maintenance man. Through a series of tasks and chores, "Daniel-san" slowly learns the proper way to use karate, defensively rather than offensively and maintaining balance instead of becoming over-confident, training for the time he can face his foes in an upcoming tournament of fighters.

Though its legacy is carried on today more so by dopes who think saying "Wax on, wax off!" is still comedic gold, one look at The Karate Kid makes you realize that, whaddaya know, there was actual reason and meaning behind the annoying catchphrase. True, the film does follow the typical "underdog movie" template, a fact not all that surprising considering director John G. Avildsen helmed the ultimate "hometown schlub makes good" sports movie, Rocky. This makes the proceedings come across as more than a smidge tired and predictable, especially when it comes to the one-dimensional villains; you have the nameless henchmen, the bottomless pit of evil that is the rival karate sensei, and the main bully/foe who spends most of the movie berating Daniel to no end, only to have a change of heart and give our protagonist the obligatory "You're all right" nod after the final fight. That, and considering all the time the film dedicates to covering the training sequences, the flick whips its ending out of nowhere and ends on a surprisingly anticlimactic note.

The Karate Kid works mostly due to the worthy emotional investment put into the characters and competent acting. Ralph Macchio does a solid job of playing a good kid with a few rough edges, a teen with problems that, for once, comes across as sympathetic and likable rather than whiny and annoying. But his Daniel-san wouldn't be the same if it weren't for Pat Morita doing as terrific a job as he did in the near-iconic role of Mr. Miyagi. More than just the stereotypical role of the old Asian guy that knows everything, Morita's performance here is pitch-perfect, playing Miyagi rather subtlely as a man who has buried a troubled past in years of self-discipline and has at last found a release in passing on these ways to a young dude from Jersey who just doesn't want to get picked on anymore. It's a team-up whose individual performances benefit the other's, leading to a number of surprisingly profound conversations and training scenes.

Oh, and Elisabeth Shue is cute as a button, too.

I've seen better movies emerge from the 1980s, and if I had seen The Karate Kid when I was five, I probably would've dug it a lot more than I did. But even today, long after the formula's been done to death and lost a little of its magic, The Karate Kid is more than well-written and -acted enough to leave its own little impression in Movieland.

Director: John G. Avildsen

Writer: Robert Mark Kamen

Cast: Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita, Elisabeth Shue, Martin Kove, William Zabka

Rating: PG (obvious karate violence -- nothing a preteen can't handle)

Classic Movie Guide Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Run Time: 126 minutes

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Format: Color, widescreen