102) Cool Runnings

Cool Runnings (1993)

Director: John Turteltaub

Starring: John Candy, Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, Malik Yoba

As is tradition, I was at the in-laws place for lunch on Sunday. We had Foxtel on and were flicking through the channel when we came across Cool Runnings playing on the Family Movie Network and the flicking stopped and after about half an hour we realised that we were in this for the long haul.

When Jamaican sprinter Derice Bannock (Leon) is disqualified in the Olympic trials after being tripped by another competitor it appears his Olympic dreams are over. However he tracks down disgraced former Olympic bobsled champion Irving Blitzer (Candy), who now lives in Jamaica and was a friend of Derice's father. Blitzer has long held a theory that sprinters make the best bobsledders, so Derice manages to convince him to coach Jamaica's very first bobsled team. Derice is joined by fellow sprinters Yul Brenner (Yoba) and Junior Bevil (Lewis) and push-cart driver Sanka Coffie (Doug), and the team make their way to Calgary in an effort to qualify for the 1988 Winter Olympics. Not only do they have to work to qualify for the competition, they have to prove to the administrators and other competitors that they belong there.

Cool Runnings is based on a true story, but the way that Disney have sugar coated it makes it feel too good to be true. What you get is a quite generic compendium of sports movie cliches borrowing plot points from Hoosiers, Rudy, Rocky and many others. You've got the wise coach who has demons in his past, you have the team of misfits who have to learn to work together, you have the team of outsiders trying to gain the respect of their peers, you have a finale where despite not winning they end up winners. It really is all there.

Over its 110 year history, the cinema has provided us with some stirring orations. Some of the most inspiring, uplifting words ever spoken have been spoken on the silver screen. Who could forget Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society urging his students to seize the day, Mel Gibson in Braveheart insisting that while the English may take their lives they'll never take their freedom, or Peter Finch in Network urging his viewers to get mad as hell. Well Cool Runnings makes its own contribution to this pantheon of motivational speeches:

Yul: Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.

Junior: I see Junior.

Yul: You see Junior. Well, 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!

It's really stirring stuff.

At the moment we live in a time when family and children's movies come under great scrutiny. People complain when a Harry Potter movie gets rated M because it means their kids can't see it. They also complain when it gets rated PG because it is too frightening. Old cartoons get re-edited to take out all the scenes where a character is smoking. People are keen to not have anything in family or children's movies which sends bad messages. So I found it quite amusing as I watched Cool Runnings to come across a really fun bar room brawling scene. If it was made today their would be a big fuss kicked up about it promoting drunken violence. I think this is when I'm supposed to say "Political correctness gone mad!"

Cool Runnings is not a great movie, but it is one of those films which everyone who was old enough to be watching films in the 1990s, regardless of their age, has some memory of. It is one of those films which everyone seems to have seen, and as a result it is a film which everyone has a connection to and a fondness for. Cool Runnings is pretty simple, family friendly stuff. It is corny to the max, but it is impossible to hate. The colour, the music, the jokes, the feel good story just make it a really lovable film. It's exactly the kind of Saturday afternoon, Disney family movie which doesn't seem to get made anymore.