Kickboxing Academy

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.

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.

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.

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.