’Cool Runnings’

Starring: John Candy, Leon Robinson, Doug E. Doug, Malik Yoba, Rawle D. Lewis

Rated: PG for language

Running time: 98 minutes

Released: 1993

The Winter Olympics are upon us, and while I’m not a huge sports fan (I spent too much time watching movies), I have to admit it’s a little exciting.

It’s easy to get caught up in the glory, victory and other words that end in Y. These athletes practice endlessly for years at a time and it all comes down to, more or less, passing or failing. Powerful stuff. And inspiring.

Keeping in line with all things inspirational, I picked “Cool Runnings” this week. It’s a loosely-based true story about the first Jamaican bobsled team to participate in the Winter Olympic Games.

The film starts out in 1987 Jamaica with Derice Bannock (Leon Robinson) entering a 100-meter race to qualify for the Summer Olympics. His hopes for that are dashed — get it? — however, when another runner falls and trips him up.

Thinking his chances of competing are done, Derice soon finds out former athlete and Olympian Irv Blitzer (John Candy,) lives nearby and was good friends with his father. As it happens, 20 years ago Irv had tried to convince Derice’s father, a former athletic sprinter himself, to join an Olympic bobsled team, thinking that sprinters would be great at pushing the sled on the ice.

It never happened, but Derice decides to pick up where Irv left off. With the help of his friend Sanka (Doug E. Doug), Derice tracks down Irv and tries to convince him to coach their budding bobsled team.

A lot can happen in 20 years, however.

The once mighty Olympian, Blitzer, has since become a disgraced, washed-up bookie, who wants absolutely nothing to do with the Olympics. Derice and Sanka eventually wear him down and assemble a team, but reality soon sets in. They have only three months in which to practice for the Calgary Winter Games. In that time they have to become bobsledding experts and, more importantly, deal with the fact that everyone else thinks that a Jamaican bobsled team is nothing but a farce.

While this film deals with adversity and diversity, it doesn’t take the overly-dramatic route that some movies with similar themes tend to do. What “Cool Runnings” does is acknowledge the dramatic subject matter, but then deals with it in humorous ways. It sort of has the “glass is half full” approach to it.

That’s great for a movie like this, too, because if your main characters are down and depressed the whole movie, it’ll leave you down and depressed as well. The lead characters in this movie never let life get to them. They roll with the punches and do their very best, no matter what’s going on around them.

Whether you hate them, love them or are just sort of in the middle, you can’t deny that movies based around sports characters are usually very entertaining. (Even as I type this I have “Field of Dreams” on in the background and am loving every minute of it.)

There are many reasons why we like them. Maybe it’s the competition, maybe it’s the thrill, but mostly it’s because we like to watch the little guy succeed — the cinematic equivalent of rooting for the underdog in the Super Bowl.

The underdogs in “Cool Runnings” are the Jamaicans and you want to see them succeed. Why? Because everyone else says they can’t.

We all know the feeling: When someone tells you you can’t do something, it makes you want to prove them wrong all the more. That’s what the Jamaicans in this movie feel and they use it as fuel to push them harder.

Bottom line, “Cool Runnings” is a fun, heartening, bobsled ride of a movie right up from its humorous beginnings to its touching finale. It’s perfect to watch in between all the Olympic events currently going on, or any time you feel you need a dose of optimism.

Although it’s a great movie, it’s unfortunately hard to come by. While some of the larger video stores may have it, the smaller ones usually don’t. To find it, your best bet will probably be Netflix.

The Movie Dude, Joe Altomere of Fort Myers, grew up in his parents’ video store in Plantersville, Texas. He owns close to 2,000 DVDs and Blu-ray discs and considers that only the start of his collection. E-mail him at altomere@yahoo.com