Cool Runnings

Cool Runnings (1993) tells the story of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics. It really happened, though almost nothing happened the way the film shows it. In the film the sled fails mechanically on the final run and the team carries it across the line on their shoulders to a standing ovation. In reality the crash came on the penultimate run and the cause was not mechanical: driver inexperience, too much speed and entering a turn too high. They were doing around 130 kilometres an hour, and their helmets scraped the ice for 600 metres. They did not carry the sled, they walked beside it, and the applause was scattered. They placed between 24th and 26th of 26 and were the only four man crew to record a time over a minute. The disqualification is invented too. In the film the coach's appeal wins the day; in reality, after their late entry was rejected, one of the pressures that reversed it came from Prince Albert of Monaco. John Candy asked for the coach's role himself and took a pay cut to do it. It was the last of his films released in his lifetime. Director Jon Turteltaub fought Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg over the accents. Turteltaub wanted them authentic and was overruled so that American audiences would hear something closer to Sebastian from The Little Mermaid. It runs 98 minutes. Good for: family viewing, sports comedy, and stories that work even when you know the ending. Less good for: if you care about the real event, the film alters nearly every significant detail. Jamaican culture is filtered through Disney and some of the shorthand plays badly now.