This movie came out the year before I was born, and only through word-of-mouth over the time I was growing up, did I know that "The Karate Kid" even existed.
Avildsen (who also did 1976's "Rocky" - another underdog story) and written by Robert Mark Kamen (who would later co-author 2001's "Kiss of the Dragon" with Luc Besson, which starred Jet Li - another example of martial arts in American cinema done right), "The Karate Kid" is by far the best (and frankly, most realistic) incorporation of martial arts into a mainstream American film. My love of "The Karate Kid" is limited to the fact that this movie, if it had been in the hands of a more fluorescent director, could have turned out a lot differently from the movie we all know and love from 1984.