Ben Oliver

Banner image for Cool Runnings
film

Cool Runnings

If one of those Swiss boys ever come across a pretty girl, he probably yell, ‘eins, zwei, drei’ and try to push her down some ice.
19 February 2022

The Jamaican bobsleigh team is back in the Olympics this year so it seems apt to revisit this.

It’s hard to pin down the secret sauce that elevates this film above its peers, but there’s something in there that works. It hammers the same fish out of water jokes over and over, it uses the same Disney tropes we’ve seen a million times, there’s product placement by the bucket loads… and yet it gets by on pure charm and spirit. And John Candy.

Cool Runnings steers very far from what really happened, but nevertheless it’s very hard not to like.

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