Hot Dog… The Movie

Directed by Peter Markle, Hot Dog… The Movie follows Patrick Houser’s Harkin Banks as he arrives at California’s Squaw Valley to participate in a grueling freestyle skiing competition – with romantic complications ensuing after Harkin begins sleeping with Tracy N. Smith’s spunky Sunny and Shannon Tweed’s sexually-aggressively Sylvia. It’s a familiar, well-worn setup that’s employed to sporadically affable yet predominantly tedious effect by Markle, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Mike Marvin, delivers a sluggish comedy that contains few elements designed to wholeheartedly capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the less-than-engrossing atmosphere compounded by Houser’s often astonishingly flat and personality-free turn as the bland central character. (Markle does, at least, elicit appreciatively quirky work from an eclectic supporting cast that includes David Naughton and James Saito.) The most problematic aspect of the picture, however, is ultimately its continuing emphasis on skiing and skiing-related stunts, as such sequences wear out their welcome almost immediately and pave the way for a midsection (and climax) that couldn’t possibly be less compelling – which does, in the final analysis, cement Hot Dog… The Movie‘s place as a distressingly one-note endeavor that is rarely as fun or easygoing as Markle has surely intended.

*1/2 out of ****