COLLEGE KICKBOXERS (1992) ** ½

On the first day of college, freshman James (Ken McLeod) immediately gets into a beef with his roommate Mark (Mark Williams).  They wind up settling their differences with an impromptu Kung Fu fight on the quad and become instant best buddies.  Their fight catches the eye of a racist gang leader named Tanner (Matthew Ray Cohen) who tries to get James to join his ranks.  When James refuses, Tanner’s gang jumps him after work, but his co-worker, a Chinese cook named Wing (Tang Tak-Wing) saves him.  James then tries to convince Wing to train him so he can win a big karate tournament and use the prize money to save Mark’s karate school. 

My main movie passions are cheese and sleaze.  There’s no sleaze here (save for a brief topless hot tub scene), but College Kickboxers has plenty of the former to make it a fitfully fun kickboxing time-killer.  It plays like a mash-up of The Karate Kid and No Retreat, No Surrender and while it’s nowhere near the classic those two films are, it has its moments.

McLeod kind of has a Thom Mathews quality to him.  The character of James has a good mix of conflicting character traits that make him a flawed hero.  Sometimes, he’s an endearing goofball.  Other times, he’s an upstanding citizen who drop-kicks racists.  He can also be a stupid lunkhead who thinks with his dick too much.  I liked the scene where his boss interrupts him while he’s talking to some girls at work and he instantly gets an attitude and says, “What’s the big idea? I’m trying to score!”  He eventually overcomes this character flaw with the help of Wing’s training. 

Since this is a kickboxing movie, there are a lot of training sequences and/or montages.  The most memorable scene has Wing making James train barefoot on a hockey rink.  I think this might be a Kung Fu first.  The most interesting aspect is when he teaches James acupuncture to take out his opponents using a dummy with all the pressure points mapped out.  Some of the training scenes are pretty silly though (like when they play the “Slap Hands” game).  It goes without saying that this movie has a training montage where the hero runs up and down the beach.  However, it also contains a montage of our hero… at a petting zoo?!?  That’s… different.

The fight scenes are decent for the most part.  I liked the scenes where Wing comes to James’ rescue and there’s a part where Mark and James fight the bad guys at the mall that I wish went on a bit longer.  Too bad the typical karate tournament ending offers no surprises whatsoever.  

College Kickboxers gives you 85 minutes of breezy, cheesy Kung Fu entertainment.   It’s goofier than your normal fare, although not enough to qualify it as a classic or anything.  Still, its heart is in the right place.  It won’t graduate Magna Cum Laude or anything, but College Kickboxers gets passing marks from me. 

AKA:  Trained to Fight.  AKA:  College Kickboxer.  AKA:  Full Contact Champ.