Cool Runnings (1993)

(If this is your first time on this blog, I ask you to read my About page first! Thanks!)

This is a film that I’ve never seen before, much to the shock of my friends as we’re all Caribbean/West Indian people and this was considered a ’90s classic! Well, I’ve finally righted that wrong! Here’s my review of Cool Runnings!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Directed by Jon Turteltaub, the film takes place in Jamaica and introduces us to Derice Bannock, an aspiring sprinter, played by Leon Robinson. His dream is to run in the Olympics and he’s been training for a long time. His dreams are cut short though when he’s accidentally tripped by one of the other runners during the qualifying race.

Derice complains about this to Mr. Coolidge, the head of the Jamaican Olympic Committee, played by Winston Stona, who tries to make him see sense.

He encourages Derice to work on his boxing and cycling as those are the only other Olympic sports in which Jamaica competes. But, Derice is adamant that he’s a sprinter, especially since his father was one too.

He changes his tune though when he discovers that his father’s trainer, Irving Blitzer, once tried to convince him to be part of a bobsled team for the Olympics. And all of a sudden, Derice wants to be a bobsledder!

He enlists the help of his best friend, Sanka, played by Doug E. Doug, who is the local pushcart derby champion (despite us seeing him crash into a shack in the beginning of the movie) and together they try to convince Irving (who lives in Jamaica) to train them to be bobsledders.

Irving, played by John Candy, believes that his glory days are behind him and isn’t interested in training the Derice and Sanka. But, he eventually gives in due to Derice’s persistence.

They need two more people to join their team, so they begin advertising. They manage to recruit Junior, a mild-mannered guy who’s always dreamt of being in the Olympics, played by Rawle D. Lewis, and Yul Brenner, a bald tough-guy who just wants to get out of Jamaica, played by Malik Yoba.

There’s some previous familiarity between them as Junior was the one who accidentally tripped both Derice and Yul during the qualifying race. Derice forgives him, but Yul still holds a grudge (or is just plain grumpy, it’s hard to tell).

Now that a team has been formed, Irving tries to convince Mr. Coolidge to sponsor them as they need $10,000 to enter the Olympics, but he says no as he doesn’t want Irving to make a fool of them or of Jamaica. So Derice and the others try to raise money themselves, but they only manage to scrape up a paltry amount.

However, Junior saves the day by selling his car for $10,000 and donating the money to the team. He’s the only teammate who comes from a rich family and wants to help out and fulfill his dream of being in the Olympics (despite his father wanting him to have a regular job in a firm in Miami).

The team is excited and embark to Canada where they are met by frigid cold!

As they get used to the temperature, Irving manages to get a slightly-used, somewhat broken-down bobsled for the team to practice with. Much of the time is spent training as well as dealing with other teams scoffing at them because they’re Jamaicans amongst a sea of ice or because they’re black amongst a sea of white.

They manage to overcome other obstacles including briefly getting disqualified by the committee due to Irving’s past of cheating, Junior’s father discovering that he’s gone to Canada without telling him, and the team losing their first race in the Olympics.

Eventually, they make it to their final race which results in the bobsled crashing due to a malfunction. The team brushes this off and walks to the finish line carrying their bobsled earning the respect of everyone. The credits say that they returned for the next Olympics.

And that was Cool Runnings! Honestly, it wasn’t a bad film, but I had two major issues with it. My first issue is that all the obstacles or conflicts in the film were overcome extremely quickly. Derice says he’s born to be a sprinter and doesn’t even want to consider doing something else like boxing or cycling. But one second later, he wants to be a bobsledder as if it’s been his childhood dream! Junior’s father visits him in Canada and orders him to come home, but Junior refuses. And the next time we see Junior’s father, he’s an ardent supporter of the bobsled team!

The team is disqualified from the committee due to Irving’s past. Irving visits the committee and speaks to them for a couple minutes, then right afterwards, they get a call saying they’re requalified! The team loses their first race because they’re emulating other teams. They realize they need to embrace their Jamaican-ness and one minute later, they’re about to win the next race!

My second issue with the film is that all the Jamaican accents sound fake! And this isn’t the actors’ fault as apparently, Disney wanted to dilute the accents so that Western audiences could understand them better. I understand their concern about their audiences having trouble understanding proper Jamaican accents, but if you’re making a film about Jamaican people, you gotta expect to hear pure Jamaican accents! It’s like if a movie was made in the East about Texans and you didn’t want them to have actual Texan accents. Like, it just comes with the territory!

Besides those two issues, I did enjoy the film. John Candy was so good and gave a stellar performance! He was hands-down the best part of the movie! Charles Hyatt, who played Junior’s father, was also a very good actor and had the most authentic of the Jamaican accents in the film!

I could tell that Leon Robinson was trying in his performance, but wasn’t quite there. I found Doug E. Doug’s character to be very annoying, but I think that’s more the way he was written rather than the performance.

In the end, I probably would have preferred this to have been a drama as the filmmakers originally intended, but I’m still happy with what we got!

So, my final score for this film is 25/35 = 71.43% (C-) !

The next review will be posted on March 11, 2025.