Kickboxing Academy

I was flipping through the channels one unproductive day and I happened upon this flick on Showtime. I don't know why I stopped flipping when I came to it. It was just one of those crazy things that happens. But I'm glad I stopped because I witnessed one of the absolute worst movies I've ever seen in my life.

From what I got out of it, the plot is a Karate Kid retread involving a Bad News Bears type of karate school and the big and mean kids from the evil school. Why is there always an evil school? Anyway, if you've seen any teen sports movie since 1985 you pretty much know how this one turns out.

The thing that caught me was the acting. It was so astonishingly bad that I was wondering if they were doing it on purpose. I think the kids they hired were the children of the crew because by the looks of things they couldn't afford real child actors. And there was one truly shocking thing in this whole mess. Steven Bauer! How the hell did Manny from Scarface get himself into this. Did he owe a life debt to the director. My God!

Anyway, if you're truly in the mood for a god awful movie, and we all get in that mood sometime, then by all means check out Kickboxing Academy. You won't be disapointed.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

This tosh is sort of a victim of the environment in which it was filmed.Obviously by a film company that's probably gone bust by now,with a no name cast,an unheard of director and shoddy,sub standard editing and writing (i.e.,featuring kickboxing in the title,despite all of the combat on display being karate,asking us to believe referees at a fight tournament would allow rival competitors distracting their opponents in the ring by shouting derogatory comments at them and throwing in attacks from outside the ring and blatant cheating in general to go unnoticed without having them disqualified or anything).Throw into the equation cliched characters (with terrible actors to play them),tired dialogue and a laughably over the top ending involving a gun toting sensei,and you have a film that could not belong to any confines other than that of made for TV and straight to video hell and is,as an aside,about one notch off being totally unwatchable.*

This very forgetable film is intended for the under 17 year old crowd (male and females alike). The kick boxing is pretty tame stuff and otherwise this film would rate a "G". The perky blonde lead, Donna Barnes is the sole reason I went easy on the fast forward button. Look for this film slotted for late afternoon TV. My three stars reflects that the film was professionally made and the pre-teens may actually like the cartoon action.

Now, I have sat through some bad pieces before like Evil Toons and Femalien 2, but this ranks right up there. The plot is unbelievably unoriginal: "evil" rival martial arts school teams up with corporate fuddy-duddy to take over the good martial arts school. Gee, where have I more or less seen this before? (Karate Kid 1 & 3, Sidekicks, several TV shows, etc.) The script is badly written (You have to learn to put the past beside you, It's time I learned to put the past behind me, A chick kicked your butt, etc.) As a martial arts movie, it's lacking. All of your basic moves are performed since half of the cast has no background in fighting and were quickly trained for some fight scenes. The whole thing is just so predictable it's silly. The only thing I enjoyed were 5 moves and Chris Lee (the former Red Ranger and now on some WB show) with teenage facial hair. One user already put it best, don't pay to see this movie. They should pay you. I can make a better movie than this and one day I will to make up for this movie ever being made.

This is the worst movie ever made. The fighting (if you can call it fighting) scenes are worse than the 3 Ninjas movies. Fart noises and stupid faces make up this movie. This is stupid even for a kid flick. Stay very far away from this movie.