Jamaica, We Have a Bobsled Team

Good morning Consumers,  This is Please Consume, the newsletter that loves movies more than Nick Cage loves taking a paycheck.

Taika Waititi takes a shot at a genre that has been somewhat forgotten since the early 2000s.

Sports comedies for the most part can be hit or miss.

For every Sandlot there are five Benchwarmers waiting in the wings.

We are not here to talk about the strikeouts.

We want to talk about the wins, the home runs, the slam dunks.

Okay, I’ll stop with the horrible sports puns.

Time to pass the ball to Tom…

(Okay, im seriously done now.)

 Cool Runnings (1993)

Written by Tom Fortner

For this week I decided to role with a bit of a throwback, a film that may be as nostalgic for some of you as it is for me. 

Not only that, it could be in the running for one of the greatest underdog stories ever.

It’s Cool Runnings!

Jamaica, We Have a Bobsled Team

Cool Runnings is a truly inspiring film about an eclectic quartet of Jamaicans who became the first bobsled team from Jamaica to compete in the Olympics. The film is roughly based on a real Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 winter Olympics, with some major differences changed to make the story more appealing, of course.

In a fluke accident, Derice Bannock (Leon Robinson) is unable to qualify for the Olympics for sprinting. Determined to somehow still compete, he comes across a disgraced former American bobsled coach and decides to form a bobsled team.

This has to be one of the greatest setups in the history of underdog stories.  Think about it for a second. It’s like a camel entering an igloo contest; the penguins would destroy him.

Watching this as a kid, especially when I hadn't seen many inspirational movies before, this was an incredible story. It taught so many lessons about perseverance and hard work and determination. To top it off, it was funny too. This may be one of the first comedy movies I ever saw and I can remember laughing throughout the whole movie.

Man, what a film.

Who’s Who

Believe it or not, this movie actually has some interesting names attached to it.

The first and most obvious is John Candy. This wouldn’t have made any difference to me as a kid, but now I know this was the last film for Candy, who played the disgraced coach, before his untimely passing in 1993.

John Candy was just an all around adored man and it’s really sad to think about this being his last film. Everyone who worked with him, like Martin Short and Steve Martin, are just effusive with praise and admiration for this man. 

Secondly is Jon Turtletaub who is best known for the National Treasure films. Cool Runnings was his second film in a string of hits that included While You Were Sleeping and The Kid.

The last name, and maybe the most surprising, is Hans Zimmer. What makes the fact that he scored this movie even crazier is that this came a few before The Lion King which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score and two Grammys.

Today’s Scene