Metacritic reviews

Morita still charms, Macchio still tightropes between petulence and raw optimism, whilst the fight scenes are competent enough to offset the woeful romantic sub-plotting.

With its sluggish script and unaging characters, The Karate Kid Part III has the rote sense of film makers trying to crank out another moneymaker.

Perhaps the series is simply getting cynical and tired.

After suffering endless abuse, Daniel wins with just a few well placed whacks: those expecting standard wish-fulfilment fantasy will be disappointed that (in tune with the philosophy, of course) he didn't give the punk a pasting.

Unfortunately, the pattern has so calcified that Gene Autry westerns seem like models of moral complexity by comparison.

This material is wearing out its welcome. I have mastered all of the lessons The Karate Kid movies have to teach and all of the surprises they have to spring. I am also intimately familiar with the plot formula, so that nothing in this third film comes as the faintest surprise. Perhaps it is time, as Mr. Miyagi might say, to study something else.

Although III claims seven times as much action as ever before, the movie is still so boring that even the love interest (Robyn Lively) leaves early. She's no Kung Fool.

In short, writer Robert Mark Kamen gave director Avildsen and his cast too little to work with for The Karate Kid Part III to have gone into production in the first place.

The makers of The Karate Kid Part III - also responsible for its successful predecessors - have either delivered or taken a few too many kicks to the head along the way, resulting in a particularly dimwitted film that will likely spell the death of the series.

More a sequel to the original than an extension of the action in Part II, The Karate Kid Part III is half-hearted and very dull.