Cool Runnings was very nearly a perfect movie.
I’ve posted a bunch of things on the internet through the years, across multiple blogs and Facebook and whathaveyou. In an attempt to consolidate all that—and to have a place for my better Facebook writing to live, away from that wretched platform—I will periodically be posting the old stuff here, mostly unedited, though perhaps occasionally contextualized or clarified.
The following was first posted at nearly one in the morning on 30 April, 2017.
Remember Cool Runnings? I remember Cool Runnings. I remember just about every line of Cool Runnings. In case you don’t, just watch this preview, which is one of those bad old previews that shows you like the whole fucking movie in two-and-a-half minutes, and with a ridiculous voiceover, to boot.
Cool Runnings, which I had previously believed to be a perfect movie, because the last four thousand times I saw it I was eleven years old, has a structural flaw in its closing moments that I can't forgive. It’s not so much what is there as what could have—nay, should have been there, instead. There is a moment at the end where the script has a perfect opportunity to achieve transcendence—a chance to escape the sad gravitational realities of this fallen planet and ascend into the weightless immortality of the heavens above. Sadly, despite three screenwriters, the steady directorial hand of the man who would one day shepherd into the world While You Were Sleeping, and the considerable resources of the House of Mouse at their disposal, they couldn’t quite get there.
In two crashes depicting violent sled crashes—one at the beginning of the film, and one in the middle—Derice asks Sanka if he is "dead." Sanka responds "yes" both times, in sarcastic and humorous overstatement. At the end of the movie [SPOILERS (for a 26-years-old movie) FOLLOW!!!], following the dramatic bobsled crash towards the end of the team’s best yet run down the hill, Sanka asks Derice if he is dead, and Derice says "No, mon, I'm not dead."
I understand the screenwriters’ impulse to subvert the audience’s expectations and turn the question around on Derice, but this wasn’t the correct way to subvert things.
The very first thing we learn about Derice is that he doesn't give up. He gets tripped up on his way to qualifying for the Olympics, so he decides he’s going to be an Olympian in an entirely different sport. He convinces drunk washout John Candy to be his coach, despite being told to bugger off a few times. His only defining characteristic is that he doesn't give up.
So when Sanka asks him if he’s dead, it is not at all surprising when he says no. Derice could never answer that question any other way, so long as he remained capable of answering such a question. (Aside: it would really have been a bold subversion of audience expectations if Derice had not been capable of answering such a question. Another missed opportunity, Disney?) Nothing of interest is revealed by the end reversal, which could be forgiven if it was less wholly consistent with what we know of the characters.
It would be far more interesting and revealing if Sanka, inspired by his best friend, his absolute rock, Derice, answered "No, mon, I'm not dead," to what should have been Derice's third inquiry into Sanka's existential status. This is not Derice's story, after all. This is the story of four individual men becoming a team. If this was Derice's story, he'd have to change more from the first frame of the movie to the last, but he doesn't. This is actually Sanka's story—a dead-end stoner who became an Olympian—or, more broadly, the story of four individuals coming together to pursue a common goal for the greater good. Whatever else it is—sublime, near-perfect filmmaking, for instance—it's not Derice's story, because Derice is utterly unmoved, from minute 1 to minute 98.
Otherwise, you know, perfect film.
And may gabless John Candy, forever and ever, amen.
