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All parent reviews for The Karate Kid
Average rating based on 7 parent reviews:
- 43% say language is an issue
- 29% say violence is an issue
- 29% say there are positive role models
- 29% say there's too much drinking, drugs, or smoking
AGE
careful for kids 10 and under
we just watched this with our 8 & 10 year olds (3rd & 4th grade) and while it is a good story, I don't think I was ready for my kids to watch it.
The main bully was rolling a joint (try explaining that to an 8 year old), and there were a lot of curse words that you expect from a HS kid, but not that you want your child to hear (ie the karate kid telling his mom that this is bull$%^&).
I would say 5th grade would be the minimum age for me.
Was this rated before their was PG13? It seemed more of a PG13 movie to me.
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AGE
I liked it even for a 3 year old
Teaches good value, work ethic, and respect. My 3 year old fell in love with her daddy's old favorite movie. Her sensei approved as well!
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AGE
Wax On...If You're Not Too Young
The original Karate Kid is still a classic after all these years. I can't honestly tell you how many times my friends and I did the whole "wax on/wax off" thing or even the move Daniel (Ralph Macchio) does at the end of the movie. Having said that, movies made in the 1980s were held to a different standard than that of today. First and foremost, the PG-13 rating did not exist when this movie came out and even if it had, I'm not sure that this movie would have received it based on the criteria of the day.
First the bad--Daniel wants to learn karate to get revenge and to hurt the guys who beat him up and stole his pride. The Cobra Karate Dojo makes viewers aware that "strike first, strike hard, no mercy sir!" and "fear does not exist" are rules to live by. The instructor is a hard-core ex-Vietnam vet, who clearly never left the jungles of the war (it doesn't exactly paint Vietnam vets in a positive light). The Cobras are bullies who are cruel, smoke dope, and rule the school. The language of both them and the rest of the teens in the movie save Alli (Elisabeth Shue) is terrible. I'd honestly forgotten how much bad language is in the movie. Some parents will not want their young children to experience the violence of karate as well. There's a scene in which Mr. Miagi is drunk and singing in Japanese in remembrance of his late wife, who died in Okinawa during World War 2. Parents might want to explain to their children that drunkenness does not solve problems, but rather mostly makes them worse.
The movie, however, is also full of positive images as it's a true underdog story. Some kids will be able to relate being the new kid in town from far away, having a mom that's single, and being bullied at school. The movie teaches about ultimately being accepted by others, dealing with being an only child of a single mother, fighting is not the answer, and people from different levels of the caste system can still love each other despite one being poor and one being rich. Mr. Miagi (Pat Morita) teaches Daniel that fighting is not the answer but that karate is rather used for self-defense. In the end, kids learn that hard work pays off, underdogs can win, and that bullying/hurting people is never a good thing.
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AGE
Bothersome Language
While this movie does have some positive messages, it seriously bothers me when people use the GD word. It's not even mentioned in the language section of the rating that this word is in the movie (twice). I watched it with my 10 year old and, while we like the movie in general, the language is unnecessary.
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AGE
There is a lot of fighting. Might be too much for younger kids. My 10-year-old was fine and enjoyed the movie. However, the mother of an 11-year-old was freaking out that this violence was not good for her baby.
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