COOL RUNNINGS A TALE OF FOUR JAMAICANS WHO GATECRASHED THE CALGARY WINTER OLYMPICS

What the heck i thought, this is a bit of a filler while i research a bit of music, COOL RUNNINGS is one of those movies where the trailer is probaly a bit more entertaining than watching the complete movie. Although not one of the late John Candy's best slapstick efforts, COOL RUNNINGS nonetheless had enough emotiveness and excellent on-location filming to make you forget some of the forced humour and cliches which underwrite the screenplay. The movie is marginally based on the real life account of the very first Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, and how they overcome potshots and unsportsman vitriol directed at them by seasoned european competitors to make it there and compete. Four Jamaican guys who had absolutely no idea how to do anything besides sitting under an unbrella listening to Bob Marley and drinking Malibu all of a sudden found themselves up in Canada freezing their pebbles off trying to ride some apparatus down an icy tube in the hope of winning a gold medal for Jamaica. COOL RUNNINGS gets 2 and half out of 5 from me, far too many one-liners go down like a lead balloon and aren't even funny, but overall, the serious sub-plot of the movie, meaning the parallel storyline which leads to the four jamaican bobsledders gaining acceptance from their more fancied opponents, is actually quite heartwarming and the acting does get better the longer the movie goes.