Cool Runnings

Affable yet entirely forgettable, Cool Runnings follows four Jamaican athletes (Leon’s Derice, Doug E. Doug’s Sanka, Rawle D. Lewis’ Junior, and Malik Yoba’s Yul) as they attempt to start their country’s first bobsled team – with the group, in their quest to qualify for the Olympic games, enlisting the help of a grizzled, disgraced former champion (John Candy’s Irv). Filmmaker Jon Turteltaub delivers an easygoing, lackadaisically-paced drama that contains few standout moments, admittedly, and yet the movie’s proliferation of agreeable attributes ensures that it remains watchable from start to finish – with, especially, the uniformly charismatic performances going a long way towards perpetuating the pleasant atmosphere. (Leon and especially Candy turn in strong work that tends to elevate even the most mundane of sequences.) It’s equally clear, however, that the film’s impact is ultimately hamstrung by a narrative that’s often way too conventional and by-the-numbers for its own good, with the hopelessly predictable nature of Lynn Siefert, Tommy Swerdlow, and Michael Goldberg’s screenplay often threatening to cancel out the overtly positive elements sprinkled throughout (ie the picture hits every single beat one might’ve anticipated, including the dreaded let’s-just-give-up stretch). Still, Cool Runnings is a decent take on the inspirational-sports-movie genre that’s sure to leave viewers below a certain age enthralled.

**1/2 out of ****