"Cool Runnings" is Still a Great Movie

I'm getting shivers just looking at the flag

A few weeks ago I was channel surfing and I came across the movie "Cool Runnings". When I was a kid, this was one of, if not the, best movies I had watched. I loved everything about this movie as a 10 or 11 year old. It had sports. It had comedy. And it was Jamaican. I love all things Jamaican. I love the flag, Rastafarianism, the accents, the people, everything. A a place that can give me all those things plus being the hometown of Bob Marley, I will forever be grateful to Jamaica. Then, they gave us the movie "Cool Runnings". Well, at least the setting.

 "Cool Runnings" is about the first Jamaican bobsled team that qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics. It was a Disney movie that starred John Candy and lesser known actors at the time. The bobsledders were played by Leon, Doug E Doug, Malik Yoba and Rawle D Lewis. The only one of the bobsledders I even recognized back then was Leon. As I stated above, the child me adored this movie. When it came on the other day, my kids were in their rooms and I had an hour or two to kill, so I decided to see if the movie still held up.

Boy, does it hold up and then some! I was just as enamored as I was when I was a young kid. I hung on every important moment of the movie. I felt bad for Derise Bannick, Yul Brener and Junior Bevil when they all got tripped up trying to qualify for the 100 meter dash to go to the summer Olympics. I felt terrible for Junior Bevil(Rawle D Lewis) because he was the one that caused them to all trip and miss their chance at the summer Olympics. I felt bad for Yul Brener(Malik Yoba) because he thought that was his one chance to get out of Jamaica, which is all he wanted. But, I felt the worst for Derise Bannick(Leon) because he was the fastest man in Jamaica, and it was a foregone conclusion that he would be going to the Olympics. The character that I didn't feel bad for, at least at the beginning, was Sanka Cofee(Doug E Doug). He was the goofball in the movie. He provided the comic relief. But, he was also pivotal in them starting a bobsled team. When we first meet Sanka, he is doing a push car derby race, and he is the self proclaimed best push car derby driver in all of Jamaica, so he kind of knows how to bobsled, even though he doesn't really know that yet.

After the trials, and the tripping, Derise is determined to get a second chance at the Olympics. He was in the, I don't know if it's a senator, or a mayor, or whatever, but it was some big time person, office asking for a re race. He doesn't get this wish granted, but he does see a picture of his father with some white dude and he asks the big wig who that guy is in the picture with his father. We come to learn that that man's name is Irv Blitzer(John Candy). Blitzer was an Olympian himself, as a bobsledder, and he wanted to get Derise's father to try it out because he thought that sprinters would make for great bobsledders. The elder Bannick had zero interest, but Derise, he was onboard with anything that would get him into the Olympics.

From then on we get a lot of clichés and troupes from Disney movies. There's classic stuff like, Jamaican's don't like the cold, so why would they want to do a winter sport. The whole town, including Blitzer, thinks Derise is crazy. The guy's that all miss out on the Olympics are, conveniently the only ones that stick around to stay on the team. Sanka wants nothing to do with it, but because he is best friends with Derise, his mind is easily changed. We have the training montage. We have the Olympic committee constantly changing rules because they don't want the Jamaicans there. We have the bad guy team from Swiss. We have the fights. We have a cheating scandal, because what would an Olympic movie be if it didn't have a cheating scandal. And we have the Jamaicans not only qualifying, but winning the hearts of the entire city of Calgary, Canada.

I know, it all sounds cliché, and it shouldn't work, but it just, somehow works. The actors, who are all Americans, and I'm pretty sure they are all New Yorkers, totally pull off the accents and make me believe that they were born and bred in Jamaica. This is one of John Candy's best, most understated roles of his very underrated career. The bad guy from the Swiss team is the best kind of sports bad guy. The Jamaicans really did face obstacles from the IOC because the IOC is just as corrupt as FIFA. Everything about this movie works. It never feels schmaltzy. Nothing feels shoehorned in. The actors are great. The directing was great. The script was great. The movie was just flat out great. I'm glad I sat down and watched it again, and I'm glad it still holds a very special place in my heart. Even my wife watched it with me the other day, that's right people, it was on again just a few days later, and she found herself enjoying it as well.

"Cool Runnings" is awesome and I cannot recommend it enough. If you are my age, or for that fact, older or younger than me, watch this movie again because I guarantee that you will love it. "Cool Runnings" is, and always will be, incredible.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture Editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He was a neighborhood champion in the four man saucer sled race when he was a young lad. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.