Kickboxing Academy

I had the displeasure of watching this film. Frankly, it has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. The acting is horrible, the writing pathetic, the dialog is comical, and if it werent for the occasional good looking teenie-bopper babe walking by, this film would make me violently ill. Whatever you do, do not pay to watch this film. Hell, they should pay YOU!

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.

Greetings And Salutations, and welcome to my review of Kickboxing Academy; here's the breakdown of my ratings:

Story: 0.25 Direction: 0.25 Pace: 0.50 Acting: 0.75 Enjoyment: 0.50

TOTAL: 2.25 out of 10.00

In the movie business, there are a lot of bandwagons to jump on, and the writers and director of this flick decided to try tethering their horse to the Martial Arts wagon. Not only did they come untethered, but the wheels on their wagon fell off, and for good measure, the horse mule-kicked them in the nethers.

The story's been told many times before, though I cannot remember one worse than Kickboxing Academy. Here's the premise, let's see if it sounds familiar? One group of martial artists deign their team is better than the group across the road. The one across the way believes they are better than the others, who are just bullies. So a contest is set up to demonstrate which of the teams is the best. The winner stays, and the loser leaves. With a simple plot like this, you need to fill the story with honest, relatable, and plausible characters and scenarios. Though the writers try, they miss the mark every time. However, one thing did make me grin. It was the wild west attitude to the heroes and villains. The good guys wear white and the bad guys wear plaid - no they don't, they wear black - Dead Men Wear Plaid, now that's a great film to watch for a laugh.

Sadly, when filmed, due to the director's inexperience, it gets worse and not better. There's not too much I can say. For the most part, the story is shot in the standard point and shoot style at a steady pace. There's not much thought given to composition, except for the end sequence where the bad guy of the picture goes nuts - This is framed pretty well. Shame he waited until the end to get creative. All of the fight sequences could have used quicker cuts and engaging camera angles because the choreography is average and needed umph to add the excitement you should be feeling. If the action bores you, then something is wrong.

Only two of the cast appear to try - Donna Barnes as the Good Sensai, June, and Tom Scalise as Bad Sensai, Maddox. Barnes is more than passible as the teacher and adds a nice softness to her character. Whereas Scalise falls into the Hammy method of over-acting, and because Academy is a comedy, it works pretty well - though it is too reminiscent of GW Bailey as Harris in the Police Academy films, maybe this is what they wanted. The rest range from average to downright terrible - Steven Bauer, who stumbles through his sense with little sense of direction.

I cannot, in all good faith recommend this film to anyone. I don't mind the Comedy fans laughing at me, but I don't want the Martial Art fanatics coming around to show me what real kickboxing looks and feels like. Keep a good round-house kick's distance from this dull travesty.

Please feel free to visit my Holding Out For A Hero and Just For Laughs lists to see where I ranked Kickboxing Academy.

Take Care & Stay Well.

Usually im very easy to please, if you followed of my review you would know that im not hard on the story, and as long as the acting is decent, im please, after all its not a drama, but a martial arts movie. But here, sadly nothing at all can save this mess... The only thing that could come close would be Master June, she is pretty good looking but thats it. The acting is terrible !!!, horribly terrible, they could have engage Russian reading English lines with no clues of what they where reading and it would not have been worst. Then you can think if the actor is so bad, as long as the fights are good... BUT NO, i am a beginner in martial arts, only 6 months of training and i could choreograph EASILY better fights then there. It was worst than having a celebrity on a WWE show where he have to make special care that the celebrity block his punch... Seriously it was so obvious there where going slow because they had no idea what they where doing... The only thing i can say wasen't so bad was the camera man, he manage to deliver, but thats it, give me a good camera man and good equipment and i promise i can make better fight with my friends at the gym... and even not being native English we could be more believable then this guys... I am currently running an enormous marathon of watching every martial movies made, good or bad, and even some that got under 2.0 here on IMDb i enjoyed them(bloodfist 2050, with the great fight Matt Mullins who may not be a very good actor, but knows how to fight) and had fun. But during the entire movie, i had the impression of watching a parody of the karate kid, like a mad TV sketch...

I thought the movie was awesome myself, I taped it and watch it at least once a week. It found itself right at home with my Karate movie collection. I thought Christopher Khayman Lee was excellent in it and I hope to see another movie with him in it sometime (hopefully in the near future). I thought that the action was good and that it had some interesting twists that I didn't think would occur the first time I saw it.