Disney: Cool Runnings (1993)

The elementary school that I went to was one of those schools where the teachers would very often not feel like doing any teaching and thus, would put on something for the students to watch. And I don't mean they would put on something educational (for the most part) but, rather, would either show some kids/family movie they had lying around on video or just put the TV on a channel like Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon to keep the kids occupied. That's how I first saw a number of movies and shows like FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Once Upon a Forest, Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, Space Jam, Toy Story, Goosebumps, and too many others to count. One day, when I was in either the fifth or sixth grade, they put on a movie that began with a guy sprinting in some tropical place, but we didn't see much of it, at least that I remember, and we never came back to finish it the next day or some other day, as we often did. At the time, it didn't interest me at all, and I don't think it did any of the other kids in my class, either. Cut to my first year or so of high school, when I've become a pretty big fan of John Candy thanks to Summer Rental and Uncle Buck, and I see a commercial for an advertisement for a winter sports movie starring him on Disney Channel. That Saturday night, I ended up watching it just for him alone, and when the movie began, I immediately recognized it as what I saw a little bit of back in elementary school. Though my memory is kind of hazy since it was so long ago, I do remember watching all of Cool Runnings and enjoying it, despite not being at all interested in the Olympics or competitive sports, in general. I saw it sporadically afterward, mostly in bits and pieces, but it wasn't until I got the DVD in 2017 that I was finally able to see it again from beginning to end. It's still a movie that I really enjoy: a nicely done, well-acted, funny, and sincere underdog story that, while certainly abundant with the tropes and themes you often get in this genre, is so earnest and genuinely inspirational that I'm easily able to overlook them and go along on the ride.

Jamaica, November 1987. Sprinter Derice Bannock is training to compete in the 1988 Summer Olympics, hoping to win a gold medal, just like his father, Ben. But on the day of the trials, another competitor, Junior Bevil, stumbles and trips both Derice and another man. Afterward, Derice demands that the race be run again but Barrington Coolidge, the head of the Jamaican Olympic Committee, says there's nothing that can be done, and Derice has no choice except to either try again in four years or attempt some other sport. Seeing a photo of his father standing next to a man he doesn't recognize in Coolidge's office, Derice learns the man is Irving "Irv" Blitzer, an American who attempted to convince Ben to compete in bobsledding twenty years ago. Seeing another chance to compete, Derice, after recruiting his best friend and pushcart champion, Sanka Coffie, to join him, goes to meet with Irv, who now lives in Jamaica as a bookie. At first very unwilling to coach the first Jamaican bobsled team, when Derice tells him that he's Ben's son, and he now has a chance to accomplish what he couldn't twenty years ago, Irv, reluctantly, agrees. When he attempts to recruit two more team members, all those who attend the preliminary meeting leave when they see just how hazardous bobsledding is. They only form their team when two latecomers show up, and they just happen to be Yul Brenner, the big, tough guy who got tripped up along with Derice during the trials, and Junior, the very person who tripped them up. Despite Yul's hostile, standoffish nature, and Junior being short in stature, clumsy, and demure, the four of them agree to come together as a team because they have no other choice. Though their training gets off to a rough start, they slowly but surely improve and start to show potential. But when Coolidge refuses to give them the necessary funding, the team attempts to raise the money themselves. In the end, Junior is able to get them the money by selling his expensive car, unbeknownst to his disapproving and controlling father. But even when they get to Calgary, their troubles are far from over, as the Jamaicans feel very out of place amid the ice and snow, and are ridiculed by the other teams, especially the East Germans. What's more, Irv's disgraceful past may end up costing them everything.

Originally intended as a serious sports drama called Blue Maaga, the initial director of Cool Runnings was Jeremiah S. Chechik, who'd done National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but due to the long period it took for them to finally get the screenplay right, he ultimately left and instead did Benny & Joon, with Johnny Depp. Brian Gibson, who'd directed Poltergeist II: The Other Side and The Josephine Baker Story, was also attached at one point, but opted to instead do the Tina Turner biopic, What's Love Got to Do with It. In the end, Jon Turteltaub, who'd just done 3 Ninjas, was the one who ultimately got the job and made the movie into what it is, which included, a massive critical and commercial hit for Disney, making over $150 million worldwide (according to IMDB, it was the studio's most successful live-action film for a while). While 3 Ninjas was fairly successful, given its budget, Cool Runnings was what really put Turteltaub on the map as a director, and he went on to make a number of successful and popular movies like While You Were Sleeping, Phenomenon, and the National Treasure movies.

Though all five of the main characters prove integral to the story and to the team, the most significant one is Derice Bannock (Leon Robinson), who sets the whole thing in motion. After his life-long dream of following in his father's footsteps and competing as a sprinter in the Olympics gets ruined, he gets the idea of forming a Jamaican bobsled team when he learns of his father's relationship with Irv Blitzer. Once he manages to get his friend, Sanka Coffie, onboard, they track down Irv and, despite his hostile reluctance and bitterness about the sport, Derice doesn't take no for an answer. Upon telling Irv who his father was, and that he now has the chance to do with him what he couldn't with Ben Bannock, he manages to get him to coach his team. So passionate is Derice about going to the Olympics that, despite how angry, standoffish, and just plain mean Yul Brenner is, and that the only other volunteer is Junior Bevil, who cost him his shot at competing as a sprinter in the first place, Derice is willing to have them as his teammates. Not surprisingly, given the crushing responsibilities that come with it, Irv makes him the bobsled driver. And even when Barrington Coolidge refuses to fund the team, Derice decides that they'll raise the money themselves, telling Irv when he asks, "Do the words 'give up' mean anything to you," "Not a thing." That said, when the others fail to raise the amount they need, and Junior reveals he sold his car for the money, Derice is reluctant to take it, feeling he's exploiting him. But when Junior insists, he's more than grateful. During their time in Calgary, Derice continues to be the one most focused on their goal, having to keep the others in line and, along with Irv, reprimand them when they get into mischief. He's the one who comes up with the name "Cool Runnings" for their bobsled, saying it means, "Peace be the journey." But he also becomes so enamored with the Swiss team's efficiency that he tries to copy their style, which only hinders their performance on the first day of the competition, and he has to be reminded that they must bobsled like Jamaicans. When they do, their performance improves dramatically. Most significantly, the night before the final day, he learns that the reason why Irv disgraced himself by cheating at the 1972 Olympics was because he was obsessed with winning, and he's encouraged not to make the same mistake.

Sanka Coffie (Doug E. Doug) is mostly the comic relief but, when it counts, he can also be seen as the heart of the team. The self-proclaimed best pushcart driver in all of Jamaica, despite crashing at the end of his most recent race (he still won, though), Sanka is not at all thrilled when Derice comes to him about competing in a winter sport... as in ice! But, because Derice is his best friend, it doesn't take much for him to agree to be on his team, though he's not as determined to enlist Irv when he proves hostilely reluctant to coach them. To Sanka's credit, though, he sticks with Derice even when the other potential recruits bail after they see the film that shows how dangerous and potentially lethal bobsledding can be. In fact, when Irv assigns them their positions in the sled, Sanka initially insists on being the driver instead of the brakeman due to his pushcart derby status... until Irv tells him of the driver's crushing responsibilities, both on and off the track. Though none of them are prepared for the cold in Calgary, Sanka, who didn't even like the thought of it, suffers the worst, even putting a hot-water bottle in his coat on the second day of the tryouts, one of many ways in which he's the comic relief. He's also not able to fit his helmet on his head, needing Irv to pound it into place; annoys Yul Brenner, whom he's not at all intimidated by, with his smelly cooking and by dressing up as a maid and offering to dust his bald head; manages to impress some of the ladies at a local nightclub with his unique dancing; and always kisses his lucky egg, which never breaks, before a run. He also has his wit, particularly when it comes to Yul, telling him when he threatens to beat his butt, "How about I draw a line down the middle of your head so it looks like a butt?", and later calling him, "The kind of club-toting, raw-meat-eating, Me-Tarzan-You-Jane-ing, big, bald bubblehead that can only count to ten if he's barefoot or wearing sandals." Also, when they crash, as they often do, Derice asks, "Sanka, you dead?", and he answers, "Ya, mon." But most significantly, Sanka is the one who tells Derice that they need to stop copying the Swiss team, saying, "If we look Jamaican, walk Jamaican, talk Jamaican, and is Jamaican, then we sure as hell better bobsled Jamaican." Thus, they bring their own flavor to the sport, with Sanka adapting his pushcart chant before they head off: "Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, its bobsled time! Cool Runnings!"

While Derice may be the one who sets the plot in motion, it's Junior Bevil (Rawle D. Lewis) who prompts him to do so, as he accidentally costs both Derice and Yul Brenner their shot at the Summer Olympics when he stumbles and trips both of them during the sprinting trials. Like Derice, he has athletic aspirations, and sees the Jamaican bobsled team as an alternative way of fulfilling them. Unfortunately, he lives under the thumb of his overbearing and controlling father, Whitby, a successful businessman who intends for his son to follow in his footsteps and is dismissive of his dreams. Demure and unable to stand up to him, Junior sells his expensive car to acquire the funds they need to get to Calgary, while his father believes he's in Miami, working for a brokerage firm. Despite this sacrifice, Junior remains on Yul's bad side for his slip-up at the trials, until he stands up for him when Sanka mocks him for his plans to live at Buckingham Palace one day. Junior insists that, if Yul works hard and wants it bad enough, he'll get a large home like that one day, noting, "My father started off in a one room hut. Now he lives in one of the biggest homes in Kingston." He then adds, "The more Yul Brenners we got making it in this world, the better off this world will be, especially for Jamaicans." Thus, when Whitby learns where Junior is and sends him a telegram, demanding he come home, Yul teaches him to be more assertive and not let others walk all over him. This comes to bear when Whitby arrives to force Junior to come home. He stands up to him after he calls him, "A lost little boy, who's lucky to have a father who knows what's best for him," asserting, "You don't know what's best for me, Father. I am not a lost little boy, Father. I am a man, and I'm an Olympian. And I'm staying right here." He then sends his father on his way, with Yul complimenting him.

Whether or not it's actually his name, Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba) is initially a big, muscular douchebag who only sees the Olympics as a way of leaving Jamaica and seeking his fame and fortune. After his shot at the 1988 Summer Olympics is ruined, he joins Derice's bobsled team as an alternative, but tells him immediately, "We may be on the same team, but I am no one's teammate." He's also about ready to kill Junior Bevil when he shows up to join them and then almost leaves. Though he sticks around when he realizes he has no choice, he tells Junior to stay out of his way. Even when Junior gives them the necessary funding, Yul tells him, "Remember, this doesn't mean that I like you. You understand?" (Yul attempted to make some money himself by arm-wrestling, but was beaten and lost everything to this big burly woman.) This standoffish attitude continues after they reach Calgary and begin the tryouts, with Yul constantly snarling at the others not to touch him, which is rather hard to do when they're crammed into a bobsled, and refusing to kiss Sanka's lucky egg. That changes when Yul's dreams are momentarily crushed when Sanka points out that the place he intends to live following the Olympics is Buckingham Palace, but Junior encourages to keep working hard at what he wants. From then on, he's much more cordial towards the others, especially Junior. When Junior's father sends him a telegram, demanding he come home, and he shrinks away when Josef Grool, the head of the East German team, belittles him at the bar, Yul drags Junior into the restroom, makes him look at his reflection in the mirror, and tells him, "Let me tell you what I see. I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-ass mother who don't take no crap off of nobody!" He gets Junior to repeat it, psyching him up, but things get out of hand when Junior's attempt to stand up to Grool starts a bar-fight that him, Yul, and Sanka get dragged into. And when he later sees Junior stand up to his father, Yul tells him, "Hey, Junior Bevil. You're a bad-ass mother." What's most heart-warming is at the end, when they lose because of a crash, but manage to earn everyone's respect due to their determination and spirit, Yul actually kisses Junior on the forehead and tells him, "But it doesn't mean that I like you."

Interestingly, according to Rawle D. Lewis, Kurt Russell was considered for Irving Blitzer but, as much as I love him, I'm glad they went with John Candy, who wanted the role so badly that he was willing to take a pay-cut for it. For more than the obvious reason, it really sucks that this was one of Candy's last movies as, along with his role in JFK a few years before, he really shows that he was great at more than just comedy. And while this is still a very funny movie, and Candy brings his usual charm and wit to it, the character of Coach Blitzer, or Irv, is hardly played for laughs. When Derice and Sanka first meet him, he's a washed up, bitter man who's working as a bookie in Jamaica and doesn't want to hear anything about bobsledding, telling Derice, "As far as I'm concerned, the sport of bobsledding no longer exists. I don't want to do it, I don't want to coach it, and most of all, and I mean most of all, I don't want to be within 2,000 miles of anybody who does." But when Derice reveals that his father was Irv's friend Ben Bannock, he's taken aback a bit. He's still unwilling to coach Derice, telling him that he's twenty years too late, but when Derice tells him that he now has the chance to prove his idea that sprinters can make good bobsledders, he reluctantly agrees to it. At a preliminary meeting to recruit two more men for the team, Irv shows them an old newsreel on the sport, and doesn't hold back when it gets to a montage of bad crashes. He tells them, "Always remember, your bones will not break in a bobsled. No, no, no. They shatter." When the film ends with a news blurb about someone dying in one of those accidents, the lights come up to reveal that Irv, Derice, and Sanka are the only people in the hall, something Irv was clearly counting on during his presentation. But, much to his chagrin, Yul Brenner and Junior Bevil arrive to fill out the two remaining slots. During their training, they start out poorly but get progressively better, and when they manage to complete a push-start in under six seconds, Irv realizes they have some potential. Regardless, when Barrington Coolidge refuses to fund them, Irv is about to give up, and is frustrated when Derice decides they should raise the money themselves. And he's not exactly thrilled when Junior manages to get the money that does push them over the edge.

Irv's past comes back to haunt him when they arrive in Calgary to register, as he runs into some old teammates of his, including his former coach, Kurt Hemphill, who isn't thrilled to see him. He does manage to get another friend of his, Roger, to get him a bobsled, which turns out to be very old and rickety, but functional. In the lead-up to the competition, Irv tries to get the guys acclimated to both the cold and moving around on ice. He also

has to defend them against those who ridicule them and deal with those who think he himself shouldn't be there. He gets especially angry about the bar fight Sanka, Yul, and Junior get into, telling them they need to shape up, since they're having trouble winning people over as it is. Fortunately for him, they focus, get into shape, get used to the ice, and on the night of their qualifying run, they manage to beat the set time of 1:00. But the next day, they're

disqualified, enraging Irv, who storms into the committee boardroom to confront Hemphill. As he's now a primary judge, and told Irv at the last moment that the qualifying time was 1:00 instead of the expected 1:02, Irv knows Hemphill disqualified them out of spite because Irv cheated back in the 1972 games. He fully admits to it, telling Hemphill and the committee, "I was stupid. I embarrassed myself, my family, my teammates, my country, and my coach. If it's revenge you

want, take it. Go ahead. Disqualify me, banish me! Do whatever you want, but do it to me! It was me who let you down, Kurt! It wasn't my guys! They've done everything you've asked of them. And they did it with all of you laughing in their face. Hey, it doesn't matter tomorrow if they come in first or fiftieth. Those guys have earned the right to represent their country. They've earned the right to march into that stadium and wave their nation's flag. That's the single greatest honor an athlete

could ever have. That's what the Olympics are about. Sixteen years ago, I forgot that. Don't you go and do the same." (This moment really shows the true acting chops that John Candy had, just as much as the emotional moments in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and others). In the end, the Jamaicans are allowed back in, and head to the finals.

After they do very poorly on the first day of the competition, Irv tells them that they need to find out how to keep themselves focused while on the track. Of course, once they stop trying to imitate the Swiss and go for their own style, they do better. The night before the final run, Derice asks Irv why he cheated back in 1972 and he admits, "It's quite simple, really: I had to win. You see, Derice, I'd made winning my whole life. And when you make

winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning, no matter what." He then encourages him not to make the same mistake, telling him, "A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it." Derice asks when he'll know that and Irv answers, "When you cross that finish line, you'll know." That happens when they end up crashing the next day but carry their bobsled to the finish line just so they can do that, if nothing else. Irv is then more than proud to have been their coach. During the ending celebration, he hugs Derice, who thanks him but Irv, in turn, says, "Thank you."

Among the naysayers the team has to deal with is Barrington Coolidge (Winston Stona), the head of the Jamaican Olympic Committee. Though sympathetic towards Derice's plight over losing the race due to Junior Bevil's bumbling, Coolidge is unable to have it reran, and tells him when he complains that it wasn't fair, "It rarely is." But when Irv comes to him about funding the bobsled team, he's unwilling to do so, despite Irv's insisting that the guys have what it takes. He tells him, "This country enjoys a fine athletic tradition, and if you think I'm going to give you the little money we have so that you can parade us around in front of the world like a freakshow, you've got another thing coming." He twists the knife further by adding, "It's bad enough how you embarrassed your own country. I'm certainly not going to allow you to embarrass ours." And when they make it to Calgary, yet stumble badly during the trials and the first day of the competition, Coolidge is clearly ashamed for his country. But like everyone else, he starts to come around as the team improves and is present for a viewing of the final day of the competition at a local bar.

Another one is Whitby Bevil (Charles Hyatt), who may be a very successful businessman but is an overbearing, controlling tyrant as a father. When Junior attempts to tell him of his plan to head to the Olympics as part of the bobsled team, Whitby steamrolls him before he can say anything, telling him that he got him a job with a prestigious brokerage in Miami. He calls his athletic aspirations "nonsense" and adds, "We agreed that it's time to get on with your real future, right? Right?!" Needless to say, when he learns where Junior actually went by reading about the team's embarrassing trial runs in the newspaper, he's beyond furious and sends him a telegram, demanding he come home immediately. When Junior doesn't, Whitby goes to Calgary to fetch him personally, telling him that he's going to do as he's told, as, "I didn't send you to the finest school for you to go around sliding on your backside! You must be mad." He refuses to let Junior speak, but is then surprised when he not only hesitates to get his stuff but stands up to him, telling him that he doesn't have his best interests in mind, despite what he says, and he's staying with the team. Whitby is so taken aback by this that he's unable to protest and just allows the elevator door to close on him. But while Junior may initially think his father has now disowned him, as they carry their sled to the finish line, he sees him in the crowd, proudly wearing one of the T-shirts with the team's logo, which have become popular among the spectators.

As efficient a captain for the East Germans as he may be, and one of the best bobsled drivers in the world, Josef Grool (Peter Outerbridge) is also, as Yul calls him, "One of the biggest assholes in the world." A heckling bully towards the Jamaicans, he really shows what a piece of shit he is at the Ranchmans bar, when he decides to pick on Junior, who's already feeling bad because he got the angry telegram from his father. Walking over to where he and Yul are sitting, he tells him, "You have no business here, Jamaica, you and your stupid friend, playing like you're bobsledders. Why don't you tourists go back to where you came from and leave the bobsledding to the real men?" Junior very demurely says that he is a real man, only for Grool to get aggressive and exclaim, "You want to say something, Jamaica? Out with it!" He backs off when Yul stands up, but he makes a mocking hand gesture (no, not that one) towards Junior. He later shoves Junior to the floor when he takes Yul's advice and tries to assert himself, again daring him to say something. That's when Yul shows up and decks him in the face, leading to a big bar fight. But, like everyone else, Grool can't help but admire the Jamaicans' determination when they decide to finish the race, despite their crash. In fact, he's the one that starts the applause. When it's over, he compliments Derice and says he hopes to see them again in four years.

But the biggest obstacle between the Jamaicans and their shot is Kurt Hemphill (Raymond J. Barry), Irv's old coach who still hods a grudge against him for cheating at the 1972 games. Determined to impede them at every turn, he has a photographer snap an embarrassing picture during their disastrous second trial run, which is then printed in newspapers worldwide, and on the night of their qualification run, he replaces a judge who's still friendly with Irv. He claims the other man took sick but you have to think it's not quite that cut and dry, and he also tells Irv, right before the run starts, that the qualifying time has been changed to just 1:00. Obviously, Hemphill and the other heads of the International Alliance of Winter Sports did so hoping that the Jamaicans wouldn't be able to beat it. But when they just barely make it, Hemphill has them disqualified anyway, citing no other reason than the committee deciding to change a certain qualification rule for that particular year. However, Irv knows he's trying to get back at him for cheating, and following his speech about it, Hemphill and the committee relent and reinstate them. And not surprisingly, he joins everyone else in applauding the Jamaicans' determination and honor at the end of the movie.

Although Cool Runnings wasn't a movie that required a lot of fancy camerawork or editing, Jon Turteltaub and his cinematographer, Phedon Papamichael, who went on to shoot a few more of Turteltaub's films, managed to establish a very striking and distinct visual aesthetic for the main settings of Jamaica and Calgary (in a true rarity, they actually did shoot in both of those locations, rather than fake it). During the first act in Jamaica, the film is bathed in bright sunlight and warm,

orange and golden brown colors, getting across how it's quite hot, even though it's November. On the flip side, Calgary comes across as basically Antarctica, with the team arriving in the middle of a bad snowstorm, and the color palette switching to grays, whites, and icy blues. Even when it's not overcast during the day, you still feel how cold this place is, and there are some exterior nighttime scenes, mainly the team's qualifying run, that, if you've ever been outside at night when it's really

cold, will make you shiver just from looking at them. The filmmakers also manage to get plenty of beauty shots of both settings, with the movie opening on a lovely Jamaican sunrise, and the first act consisting of a number of shots of the landscape beneath either the bright sun or an overcast sky. We also get a sense of some of the characters' lifestyles, with Derice and his wife living in a modest but nice bungalow by the

seaside, while Junior Bevil lives in his father's enormous, posh Kingston mansion. Sanka, on the other hand, appears to live in a couple of shacks where he runs a business, and Irv's home is a bar where he operates as bookie. Similarly, as hostile a place as Calgary initially seems in regards to its weather conditions, it is shown to have a beauty all its own, with its snow-covered environments and

the tracks, especially when they're seen at night. Other than the tracks and the Olympic stadium, the most noteworthy place here is the country/western-styled Ranchmans bar and nightclub, where Junior, Yul, and Sanka get into a big fight with the Germans.

There are a handful of instances where Turteltaub does get a tad extravagant with the editing, mostly in montages that show characters preparing for their runs by cutting to different angles and close-ups, be it Derice at the beginning or when the Jamaicans are gearing up for their bobsled runs, as well as moments of epic slow-mo, like when Junior accidentally trips Derice and Yul, Derice watches the Swiss bobsled team, finding himself impressed with their efficiency, and after the crash, they see

the medics running towards them. On the flip side, when they first arrive in Calgary and realize how cold it is there, we see a sped-up shot of Sanka quickly putting on every single shirt he has, as well as his duffel bag, and the Jamaicans then running into a store to buy some winter coats. As far as noteworthy camerawork goes, the Swiss team are often shot at angles to make them come off as impressive and magnificent, and the morning after Irv admonishes them for their bar fight, we see a

shot from his POV as he lies in bed,looking up at them after they wake him in order to start their training. Going back to the subject of montages, it's a sports movie, so we got to have some training montages. Initially, they're used for comedic effect to show how bad the Jamaicans are at their first attempts at bobsledding, but later, as they're training in the lead-up to their qualifying run, it shows how they're improving through hard work. 

A predictable gag occurs when, after we see that he can't do one pull-up, Sanka is suddenly doing them really well: Irv has a hold of his legs down below and is pushing him up and down, telling him he's going to have to do it himself eventually. Finally, when they're racing down the actual bobsled track, the camerawork and rapid editing get across how fast and dangerous it is. Moreover, the film uses genuine news coverage of the actual competition

during the third act, including the crash that the Jamaicans did suffer. And the sight of them determinedly carrying their sled towards the finish line afterward has a build up to it, with the assistants initially blocking the camera's view of them, and the film cutting to their POV as they move past them and into the crowd's sights.

Much of the humor comes from how out of their element the Jamaicans are, both in regards to the sport itself and the conditions in Calgary. When they first start training using a pushcart, all four of them have a hard time getting in, with at least one of them, usually Sanka, running after the cart, and the others tripping and falling over themselves, or turning over the cart and spilling onto the ground. Even when they finally manage to get a push-start done in an acceptable amount of time, they fly

down a hill and slam into the side of a police car. Their first couple of trial runs in Calgary don't go much better, as Sanka spends the first one screaming bloody murder, cursing at Derice and Irv, yelling for them to slow down (even though he's the brakeman), and they finally go along one bend and don't come out the other side, leading to one of the exchanges of, "Sanka, you dead?", "Ya, mon." During the second trial, the bobsled gets away from them completely and they chase it down

the ice track, slipping and falling. That extends into the comedy of watching them deal with the ice and snow, which they're not used to. It starts even before they leave the island, with Sanka not liking the idea of it being a winter sport to begin with, and when Irv is trying to get the others acclimated to cold weather by having them eat ice cream, Sanka is having to sit inside the truck. When he sticks his head out, and Irv asks if it's cold enough,

one of his dreadlocks breaks off like an icicle. Then, when they arrive in Calgary, they're horrified when they're blasted by the blizzard, and as they're standing outside, waiting for their bus, Derice sees Sanka's breath, leading to this exchange: "Sanka, mon, whatcha smokin'?" "I'm not smokin'. I'm breathin'." Irv takes them to an ice rink to help them get used to walking on it, and again, they slip and fall over themselves, have trouble keeping their balance, and grab onto each other support. And then, they have to scramble to get off the ice to avoid being caught up in hockey practice.

Like I said earlier, Sanka is a big source of comedy, as he's just a funny guy in general. His introductory scene shows what a great pushcart driver he is, but even though he wins, a whack on the side from his opponent sends him flying off the track and crashing into a small shack, which collapses on top of him. When the others come running to check on him, we get the very first, "Sanka, you dead?", "Ya, mon." Again, Sanka immediately objects to the notion of a winter sport when Derice first tells him

about bobsledding, leading to this exchange: "Ice? Ice!" "Well... it's kind of a winter sport, you know." "You mean winter, as in ice?!" "Maybe." "You mean winter, as in igloos and Eskimos and penguins and ice?!" "Possibly." "See ya!" He proceeds to march away, saying he's going to take a hot bath, as he's cold just thinking about it. Later, when they're trying to raise money to get to Calgary, Sanka sings on the street, "'Nuff people say, you know, they can't believe, Jamaica, we have

a bobsled team." Eventually, he does get some money, but only when a guy comes up and says, "I'll pay you a dollar to shut up!" Similarly, when Derice is working a kissing booth, but gets into trouble with his wife over it, Sanka decides to take his place, only to see that the next person is an old lady with no teeth. He promptly starts crying over this. Then, in addition to all the problems he especially has in getting used to the cold in

Calgary, Sanka has to have Irv pound his helmet into place on his head, with his dreadlocks now blocking his eyes. Also, during their first disastrous trial run, Sanka tells Irv he has to "go" right when they've climbed into the bobsled, and Irv tells him to just hold it. At the end of that run, when they've crashed, Derice tells him that he can pee now and Sanka moans, "Too late." At one point, Sanka annoys Yul by dressing up like a maid, holding a

feather duster, and telling him, "Maid service, sir. Would you like your bed turned down? Mint? Perhaps I can dust your head!"; Yul says, "Whatever's wrong with you is no little thing." And his crazy dancing at the Ranchmans bar is a sight to behold.

Humor also comes from how this rather motley crew, Irv included, interact with each other, as their personalities often clash. Unlike Junior, Sanka is not at all intimidated by Yul, constantly making jokes about and annoying him, while Yul is about ready to pound Junior when he first shows up to become part of the team. During much of the first half, Yul is so antisocial that nobody, including Irv, is able to touch him without getting threatened, and he's unwilling to be a team-player in general,

leading to some funny bits of conflict, when he complains about them touching him when they're climbing into the bobsled or when he refuses to kiss Sanka's lucky egg. Later, Derice's overzealous determination to win, to the point where he's constantly pushing the Swiss' methods onto the others, really gets on their nerves. Following their first awful day in the competition, he mentions the Swiss yet again, which is the last straw, with Sanka grumbling, "Ah, will you shut up about the damn Swiss?! I mean, it was all that 'eins zwei drei' nonsense that got us all nervous in the first place." 

Even though he plays Irv mostly straightforward, John Candy still sometimes goes in for the comedy he was best known for, as his introduction has Irv being crushed when a horse he bet on loses and he uses a pool stick to smash the radio. Irv also threatens Derice and Sanka with one when they first come to him about bobsledding, and he grabs Derice by the throat, telling him to get lost. During the presentation when they're trying to recruit two more members, Irv winces and cringes at the

crashes, commenting, "Oh, yeah. I almost forgot, uh, one minor drawback to this delightful winter sport: the high-speed crash." When they have their team, and Sanka insists on being the driver, he and Irv have this exchange: "You don't understand. I am Sanka Coffie. I am the best pushcart driver in all of Jamaica! I must drive! Do you dig where I'm coming from?" "Yeah, I dig where you're comin' from." "Good." "Now dig where I'm comin' from. I'm comin' from two gold medals. I'm comin' from

nine world records in both the two- and four-man events. I'm comin' from ten years of intense competition with the best athletes in the world." "That's a hell of a place to be coming from!" As part of their training, he has the boys push along a car while he's sitting in it, and eat ice cream to get used to the cold (or sit inside the truck, in Sanka's case). He's so happy when they manage to achieve a push-start in the appropriate time that he rushes

down the hill after them, completing oblivious to how they slammed into the side of a police car. He even pushes one of the officers aside in his excitement. Later, there's a classic Candy moment where the guys wake Irv up for their training by putting an alarm clock right next to his head and he just about jumps out of his skin, before looking back and forth at them frantically as they tell him to rise and shine, with Derice adding, "It's

butt-whipping time." And the night before the first day of the competition, Irv tells them, "Now, a lot of coaches would be giving you one of those, 'Win one for the Gipper,' speeches. I'm not good at that stuff. Instead, I thought I'd lead you in a psalm of inspiration... Our Father, who art in Calgary, Bobsled be thy name. Thy kingdom come, gold medals won, on Earth, as it is in Turn Seven. With Liberty and Justice for Jamaica and Haile Selassie. Amen."

The biggest criticism that Cool Runnings often gets is that, if you're familiar with the genre, it's a very predictable story. I watched Siskel and Ebert's review of the movie and, while I was surprised that they both panned it as harshly as they did, I can't say that Roger Ebert was wrong when he called it, "An absolutely routine series of sports movie cliches," adding, "There's hardly a scene you can't predict," and, "It's just your basic underdog, fish out of water story..." Trust me, if you could come

up with a list of all the expected sports movie tropes, there are few that you wouldn't find here. A ragtag group of underdogs who have to learn to work together? Check. A trainer who's initially reluctant to work with them but becomes their biggest supporter after he does? Check. A bunch of naysayers who believe the team are out of their depth, with some even mocking them? Check. The team ultimately ends up inspiring those who were dismissive of them? Check. In short, there's a very

good reason why there's a blurb from ABC-TV on the DVD cover that proclaims the movie to be, "Rocky on ice!", right down to the ending, where the Jamaicans don't win but manage to go the distance by carrying their wrecked bobsled to the finish line. But is that really a bad thing? As long as it's done well, does it matter if the story is predictable? Personally, I don't think so. For me, Jon Turteltaub's direction, the performances of the actors and the likability of their characters, and the screenplay's genuine heart and humor more than make up for how it's not exactly original in the context of its genre. 

Another complaint is that the movie is very sanitized, with history being significantly altered to turn this into an inspirational underdog tale, and, again, that is true. Among other facts, the idea of a Jamaican bobsled team was actually the brainchild of a pair of Americans; Jamaica was not, in fact, the only tropical country to compete in winter sports; and because of their inexperience with the conditions, they did quite poorly during the competition. As noted before, they did suffer a

bad crash, but it happened during their penultimate run, was due to excess speed and their inexperience, rather than a rickety sled, as is the case here, and they walked alongside the sled to the finish line, which did receive some applause. Most notably, while they were seen as fish out of water, that actually made them popular at the games and the other teams were very welcoming, rather than antagonistic, and helped them with their equipment. Gene Siskel particularly didn't care for

how the movie made the East German team into "bad guys," and while I see them as more just obnoxious bullies than out and out villains, I get what he means. The thing is, though, most of those true-life facts and details don't exactly make for a compelling story. I do agree that not making one specific team into a bunch of dickheads might've been better, and they could've done something with the notion that, even though the team didn't do so

well in the competition, and couldn't take part in the final run because of the crash, they tried their best and were accepted by the other teams, but the filmmakers still did what they felt they needed to mold it into a story with a three-act structure, conflict, and drama, and they're hardly the only ones to do so, either. And as for the sanitizing of the real story... well, what do you expect? It's Disney. With them behind it, this definitely wasn't

going to be the bobsled equivalent of Any Given Sunday or Friday Night Lights. In fact, I'm surprised they allowed the amount of profanity in the movie that they did, particularly when Yul calls Josef Grool an "asshole" and encourages Junior to think of himself as a "badass mother." And, of course, they were going to take the crash and make it into a big inspirational moment, with Sanka asking, "Derice, ya dead?", Derice answering, "No, mon. I'm not dead. I have to finish the race," and the four of them carrying the sled to the finish line, receiving a slow-building, standing ovation for it.

One thing I will admit I hated learning about when I looked up info on the movie's production was how the higher-ups at Disney repeatedly hounded the actors about their accents. Basically, the studio thought they were sounding too "authentically Jamaican," with Doug E. Doug saying they wanted him to sound like Sebastian the crab, while Leon Robinson said they wanted him to be like, "A black Aladdin." Jon Turteltaub even said that Disney president Jeffrey Katzenberg threatened to both fire

and black-list him from the studio if he didn't get the accents to where he could understand them. By extension, it makes there being an implied racial motivation behind the committee's going along with Kurt Hemphill's disqualifying the Jamaicans, with Irv commenting, "Oh, pardon me. I didn't realize that four black guys in a bobsled could make you blush," a tad uncomfortable, especially knowing that wasn't the case in reality. Again, I

like the speech it motivates Irv to give, but those behind-the-scenes tidbits don't do much to dispel Disney's racist reputation. (Similarly, not only are the Germans not painted in the best light but Peter Outerbridge's accent as Josef Grool is very stereotypical.) I don't mean to turn this into a racial diatribe, especially since most Jamaicans do embrace the movie, and I don't think it's something that will impact my future viewings of it, but that was disconcerting to learn.

Going back to Siskel and Ebert, the former also criticized the movie's humor, describing it as "grammar school" and that it, "Could've been very funky in other hands." As I've already gone into, the humor works for me, although I'm just a sucker for slapstick and well-done, light-hearted, family friendly comedy in general, as I think we have here. That said, I do think the montage of potential sponsors laughing in Derice's face about the bobsled team is a bit much and too on the nose. But

the criticism that I really don't agree with comes from Ebert, who said, "The whole Olympics movement has been corrupted by so much hype, so much emphasis on winning at any cost, on superhuman perfectionism, that this cheerful band of Jamaican dreamers could've been used to bring some sanity back to the subject." Okay, so the Jamaicans are a bit wacky, viewed as unwelcome outsiders, and Derice's motivation throughout most of the movie is to follow in his father's footsteps

and become a medal-winning Olympian, but in the end, it becomes less about that and more just working hard and trying your best, without resorting to underhanded tactics. That's the very point Irv tries to get across to Derice when he tells him why he cheated in the Olympics sixteen years ago, and that he shouldn't focus solely on winning the gold. Again, the Jamaicans don't win the competition, but they win the respect of their

peers with their determination to finish what they started, even if they're now not going to win, and they return home as celebrated heroes. Also, there's a message about being true to oneself, which Junior has to learn in order to stop his father from running his life and forcing him to become something he isn't, and which Derice has to learn when trying to copy the Swiss team causes them to come in last place on the competition's first day. I feel that Ebert was so distracted by the film's more predictable aspects that he didn't grasp how it was counteracting his complaints about the Olympics.

By this point, Hans Zimmer had already made a name for himself as a composer, having scored Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Backdraft, Thelma & Louise, and, another popular sports movie, A League of Their Own, among many others; unfortunately, his score for Cool Runnings isn't among his best, mainly because it's the one aspect of the movie I barely remember. It does have instances of a calypso flavor, especially during the first act of Jamaica, which includes instrumentals for Sanka's son, which play throughout the montage of them trying to raise money. Zimmer also comes up with an old-fashioned, overly jaunty piece of music for the bobsledding newsreel Irv shows the recruits, and when they arrive in Calgary, we get a country-style, fiddle piece that actually does kind of fit with how out of their depth the Jamaicans are. And, as per the genre and what it's going for, there are some emotional and heartfelt themes, most notably at the end, when they've won everyone over. This is an example of a movie where the soundtrack is a little more memorable to me than the actual score, with Love You Want by the Wailing Souls playing over the opening credits, Rise Above It by Lock, Stock and Barrel during the training montage in Calgary, I Can See Clearly Now by Jimmy Cliff over the first part of the ending credits, and an actual song version of the Jamaican Bobsled Chant performed by Worl-A-Girl, which closes out the credits.

I guess I'm just a sucker for well-done, heartfelt, inspirational movies, even when they're not true-to-life, because I adore Cool Runnings. As predictable as it may be, so much else about it is done so well, like the characters and the performances, particularly that of the great John Candy, the humor, the direction, the soundtrack, and the sincerity of the storytelling, that I think you can overlook it and let the movie carry you along. Granted, the actual music score isn't the best, some instances of humor are too cartoonish and cliched, it could've done without making the East German team into bullies, as well as been inspirational about how accepted the Jamaicans were in actuality, and it's a shame to know how ridiculous Disney was about the cast's accents, but, again, everything else more than makes up for it. If you're a fan of John Candy or sports movies and haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself.