Chris Conrad | Through the Shattered Lens

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If, over the next few weeks, you find yourself having trouble getting to sleep, you might be tempted to log onto Netflix and watch the fourth season of Cobra Kai. That’s certainly what I’m planning to do over the course of the next few days. However, before you watch Cobra Kai, you should make sure that you’ve seen all of the earlier Karate Kid films because you never know who might show up on the show. I mean, if Thomas Ian Griffith is coming back, anyone could be coming back! And that includes Julie Pierce, the young karate student at the center of 1994’s The Next Karate Kid.

Julie (played by Hillary Swank) is a troubled teenager. She lives in Boston with her grandmother. She attends a high school that is run by a weirdly fascistic self-defense instructor named Colonel Dugan (Michael Ironside), who teaches all of the jocks to be tough, ruthless, and to show no mercy. When Julie’s grandmother leaves to for Los Angeles so that she can relax, Julie’s new caretaker is an old family friend who turns out to be Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita).

At first, Julie wants nothing to do with Miyagi. She’s still angry about the death of her parents in a car crash. All she wants to do is take care of a falcon that lives on the roof of the school. She does like a boy named Eric McGowen (Chris Conrad) but Eric is also friends with the members of Colonel Dugan’s paramilitary gang, the so-called Alpha Elite. She needs someone who can understand her and her anger and, at first, Miyagi doesn’t seem like he’s capable of doing and of that. But then Miyagi discovers that Julie has a natural talent for jumping on top of cars and this leads to….

Well, you know what it leads to. It’s The Next Karate Kid! Ralph Macchio was 33 years old when this film was first released and was a bit too old to still be playing a kid so the film’s producers tried to reboot the franchise by giving Miyagi a new student. The Next Karate Kid pretty much hits all of the story beats from the first film, though it does change things up by not featuring a karate tournament. Instead, it all leads to a post-prom fight between Miyagi and Dugan. This film is your only chance to see Pat Morita face off against Michael Ironside and that’s got to be worth something.

The Next Karate Kid does not have a particularly good reputation and, watching the film, I understood why. There’s very little of the spontaneity or the wit that made the first film memorable. That said, I did appreciate Michael Ironside’s villainous turn. If Hillary Swank doesn’t necessarily give the type of performance that would make you think, “Future two-time Oscar winner!,” she still does a good job of portraying the anger that’s at the heart of the character. If nothing else, The Next Karate Kid deserves some credit for taking Julie’s anger seriously as opposed to just writing it off as being a “teen girl thing.” The Next Karate Kid wasn’t as bad as I expected but it was still hard not shake the feeling that it was largely unnecessary.

That’s said, I still look forward to Julie’s eventual visit to Cobra Kai.

Previous Insomnia Files:

1993’s Airborne is a guilty pleasure kind of film for me. It’s not a spectacular film by any means, but it has just about everything I adore from the 1990s.. Hockey, Rollerblades, Music, and a fun cast. Sometime last year, I was able to rent it off of Amazon, but it’s no longer available. I’m assuming it will eventually make the move over to HBO Max, but in the meantime, it’s available for rental on Youtube.

Airborne was Director Rob Bowman’s first feature after working on such shows as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. He’d later go on to become a producer/director on The X-Files before eventually directing the first motion picture for the series, X-Files: Fight the Future. He’s since directed Reign of Fire and produced the ABC detective comedy, Castle.

Airborne is the tale of Mitchell Goosen (Shane McDermott, Swan’s Crossing), a kid who loves surfing and rollerblading more than anything. When his parents win a trip to Australia for six months, they send Mitchell to live with his cousin in Cincinnati. Of course, he’s a little out of place, but his cousin Wiley (Seth Green, Without a Paddle) tries to make things a little easier for Mitch. Mitch’s laid back surfer attitude is a hit with the ladies, but the guys aren’t really liking his style. Jeff (Chris Conrad, The Next Karate Kid) has it out for Mitch, especially when Mitch meets Nikki (Brittany Powell, Fled) and costs Jeff’s hockey team a win against the annoying prep squad. Punishment for losing the hockey game is pretty messed up by high school standards, with the usual pranks laid out for both Mitch and Wiley. Will Mitch be able to adjust to Cincinnati life, make new friends and live without his surfboard? I enjoyed the way Mitch finds a solution to his problem that fit his style.

There’s not a lot to say about the casting here. Among the leads, there’s a lot of young talent that went on to greater work. Some other notable faces are Jack Black (Jumanji: The Next Level), Alanna Ubach (Bombshell), and Jacob Vargas (Devil). They round out the cast well, but you don’t get to know too much about them.

Being 1993, Airborne took place just as the Internet was getting really started. This meant that outside of playing a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis after homework was done, you went outside and played something like Stickball, skateboarding, basketball, street hockey or rollerblading. I think the nostalgia of it all is what brings me back to Airborne over time (especially now with so many limits on going outside). The rollerblading scenes in the film are great for the time period, thanks in part to Team Rollerblade. We have close-ups of riding, along with action shots that capture all of the intensity of riding in traffic. Stunt skaters slide under trucks, down along stairs , leap over cars and make some great moves in the big race.

Airborne is not without some cheesy moments. The music, while fun, is very dated. It’s the same kind of music you’d expect from 1990’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Cool as Ice. The film has a number of filler scenes where Mitch is lost in a musical montage. Some tracks include the classic Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”. and Jeremy Jordan’s “My Love is Good Enough”. There’s not a whole lot to be said about it. It was the Nineties. Additionally, it would be cool to find out what happened to Mitch after the six months. Did he decide to stay in Ohio for a while? Did he return to his parents, but still keep in touch with everyone on the skate crew? I suppose Mitchell Goosen’s future is left somewhere in the fan fiction world.

Overall, Airborne is a time capsule of a film, focusing on a time just before the Internet captivated everyone and going outside to play was the norm. It’s a good watch if you have a few hours to burn.