kuner-59029
Joined Apr 2015
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Ratings553
kuner-59029's rating
Reviews171
kuner-59029's rating
The premise of this film is brilliant. A grumpy Jewish holocaust survivor who lost his entire family lives in seclusion in Colombia. When the vacant house next door is sold, a wealthy German moves in complete with an entourage of suspicious looking helpers.
A dispute over a part of the garden where he planted the roses that his murdered wife used to plant leads to him and the neighbor crossing paths. He suspects that his neighbor is none other than Adolf Hitler. The Israeli embassy doesn't believe him, so determined to prove his theory, he gets close to his neighbor. They develop an uneasy relationship and eventually a sort of friendship. This is a story about two old men who have lost everything and finding their place in a world that has moved on while they have not.
The acting is stellar. Udo Kier is brilliant even at 80. The premise is heartbreaking and the story is bookended beautifully with the rose theme.
Unfortunately, the film tries to be a comedy, when it's really a character drama. The entire film is scored with a classic comedy soundtrack which is completely at odds with the actual story taking place on screen.
It's absolutely baffling how the production didn't understand their own movie like this. Yes, there are a few comedic moments, but the plot is 100% drama.
Maybe someone can filter out the music with AI and fanedit a dramatic thriller score into it. That would make this film a 9/10.
A dispute over a part of the garden where he planted the roses that his murdered wife used to plant leads to him and the neighbor crossing paths. He suspects that his neighbor is none other than Adolf Hitler. The Israeli embassy doesn't believe him, so determined to prove his theory, he gets close to his neighbor. They develop an uneasy relationship and eventually a sort of friendship. This is a story about two old men who have lost everything and finding their place in a world that has moved on while they have not.
The acting is stellar. Udo Kier is brilliant even at 80. The premise is heartbreaking and the story is bookended beautifully with the rose theme.
Unfortunately, the film tries to be a comedy, when it's really a character drama. The entire film is scored with a classic comedy soundtrack which is completely at odds with the actual story taking place on screen.
It's absolutely baffling how the production didn't understand their own movie like this. Yes, there are a few comedic moments, but the plot is 100% drama.
Maybe someone can filter out the music with AI and fanedit a dramatic thriller score into it. That would make this film a 9/10.
The first Karate Kid had the perfect formula. Fatherless poor kid moves to a new town, gets bullied, meets a girl who's ex happens to be his primary bully and a rich prick on top of it. While receivng a beatdown, he is saved by the unassuming Japanese janitor from his apartment building, who becomes a father figure and teaches him Karate to defend himself.
The father-son dynamic is mirrored with the awful trainer of the Cobra Kai gym. It's a feel good story about father figures, finding meaning and belonging and teaching values.
After two mediocre sequels, Cobra Kai rebooted the franchise and brilliantly reversed the perspective in its first two seasons. It was a darkly comedic character driven drama about the former bully Johnny, now a down on his luck loser stuck in the past, who rediscovers meaning by saving another poor kid from bullies and becoming his mentor. Except he's still a moron and an 80s badass who hasn't adapted to modern times. And to make matters worse, he's hung up on his former victim, who is now a self-aggrandizing prick, and who tries to sabotage Johnny's life at every turn - eventually taking on Johnny's biological son as student.
As brilliant as Cobra Kai started, it unfortunately introduced too many kid characters as the show went on, and especially in its awful last season became a noisy, loud and increasingly ridiculous spoof complete with poop jokes and eventually even multiple murders.
But throughout the series, the dynamic between Daniel, Johnny and the evil Senseis Kreese and Silver remained storytelling gold.
Unfortunately, the new movie does away with these dynamics and instead brings back Jackie Chan from the awful Karate Kid reboot that nobody liked.
While this movie is a much better film, the overall plot structure is a mess.
The new kid is already a Kung Fu expert. His story begins in Beijing, goes to New York where he actually becomes a mentor figure for a former boxer - an interesting angle, which is completely dropped after the half hour mark when Jackie Chan arrives. Instead of focusing on their mentor-student relationship, Jackie Chan travels to LA to bring in Daniel from Karate Kid 1 to train the new kid. None of it makes narrative or thematic sense and exists only to have increasingly ridiculous training scenes.
The fight scenes are expertly choreographed, as one would expect from a Jackie Chan film. The actors portraiting the two teen fighters have incredible talent. The problem is, that their fights are so surreal and overstylized, that they're not relatable one bit. It's like watching a circus performance. Impressive, but hollow. The first Karate Kid was great not because it was about Karate, but because it told a story and had a message.
Karate Kid Legends' story is a barely coherent skeleton of a plot to get from one action or comedy scene to the next. There are no themes to be found. It's like seeing a shiny apple in a story only to find that it's hollowed out inside. Empty calories.
The feeling shifts once William Zabka makes an obligatory cameo appearance. Immediately you feel the chemistry between these two characters and realize the wasted potential of exploring their stories further.
An edited down or remade movie version of Cobra Kai would have been a bigger success than this. The first two seasons of Cobra Kai in particular had the structure of a great movie. Mix in Terry Silver's arc from Season 4 and it could have been a great set of theatrical films.
The father-son dynamic is mirrored with the awful trainer of the Cobra Kai gym. It's a feel good story about father figures, finding meaning and belonging and teaching values.
After two mediocre sequels, Cobra Kai rebooted the franchise and brilliantly reversed the perspective in its first two seasons. It was a darkly comedic character driven drama about the former bully Johnny, now a down on his luck loser stuck in the past, who rediscovers meaning by saving another poor kid from bullies and becoming his mentor. Except he's still a moron and an 80s badass who hasn't adapted to modern times. And to make matters worse, he's hung up on his former victim, who is now a self-aggrandizing prick, and who tries to sabotage Johnny's life at every turn - eventually taking on Johnny's biological son as student.
As brilliant as Cobra Kai started, it unfortunately introduced too many kid characters as the show went on, and especially in its awful last season became a noisy, loud and increasingly ridiculous spoof complete with poop jokes and eventually even multiple murders.
But throughout the series, the dynamic between Daniel, Johnny and the evil Senseis Kreese and Silver remained storytelling gold.
Unfortunately, the new movie does away with these dynamics and instead brings back Jackie Chan from the awful Karate Kid reboot that nobody liked.
While this movie is a much better film, the overall plot structure is a mess.
The new kid is already a Kung Fu expert. His story begins in Beijing, goes to New York where he actually becomes a mentor figure for a former boxer - an interesting angle, which is completely dropped after the half hour mark when Jackie Chan arrives. Instead of focusing on their mentor-student relationship, Jackie Chan travels to LA to bring in Daniel from Karate Kid 1 to train the new kid. None of it makes narrative or thematic sense and exists only to have increasingly ridiculous training scenes.
The fight scenes are expertly choreographed, as one would expect from a Jackie Chan film. The actors portraiting the two teen fighters have incredible talent. The problem is, that their fights are so surreal and overstylized, that they're not relatable one bit. It's like watching a circus performance. Impressive, but hollow. The first Karate Kid was great not because it was about Karate, but because it told a story and had a message.
Karate Kid Legends' story is a barely coherent skeleton of a plot to get from one action or comedy scene to the next. There are no themes to be found. It's like seeing a shiny apple in a story only to find that it's hollowed out inside. Empty calories.
The feeling shifts once William Zabka makes an obligatory cameo appearance. Immediately you feel the chemistry between these two characters and realize the wasted potential of exploring their stories further.
An edited down or remade movie version of Cobra Kai would have been a bigger success than this. The first two seasons of Cobra Kai in particular had the structure of a great movie. Mix in Terry Silver's arc from Season 4 and it could have been a great set of theatrical films.