The first 20 or 30 minutes feel so campy, but by the time Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) become the primary focus, the quality of the story improves. It's still a big ask to think that Daniel can learn enough to even come close to winning a tournament against black belts. He did all that in 2 months? We see his training, but was he still going to school at all? And what happened to his mom for the middle 90 minutes of the film? She simply disappears, and Mr. Miyagi seems to have quit his maintenance job, too. In terms of the Cobra Kai school, the trainer is an over-the-top villain, and for the majority of the film, none of the kids training with him like Daniel or act like they would feel any empathy for him. Well, Bobby (Ron Thomas) doesn't want to take things too far, but Johnny (William Zabka) and the others do... And there's the class issue -- the Hill vs. Reseda. Class is the real thing, and I wondered where Daniel was getting the money even to ta...
What I immediately noticed in part 2 was the additional of humor. The first movie didn't really have any humor, but this one tried to include it everywhere. Usually, I like humor. Here, at first at least, I thought it felt forced, like the test group from the first movie said it lacked humor and so the writers made sure to add it everywhere in this one. But then I thought: Most of the humor comes from Spider-Man. Maybe the use of humor is to show that he has grown in confidence. If he had to make a choice between being Spider-Man and Peter, he's made the choice: He's Spider-Man. Of course that won't stick. Like the first franchise, this franchise is set-up like a Romance movie, and so Peter (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen (Emma Stone) will need to continue to wonder "will we or won't we"? Gwen seems to have made his firm choice. She's going to Oxford for 6 months, without Peter. But, of course, Peter makes the decision to stop her. Gwen doesn't put up...