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Out Cold (2001)

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 Formulaic movies can be a good thing. You have your protagonist, antagonist, character arc, plot devices, a few twists and turns here and there, and for the most part you can make a watchable movie. Sometimes it might even be pretty good. That's the good side of movie formulas. However, for every yin there is a yang, and "Out Cold" is on the dark moldy underbelly of it all.

Out ColdWay back in the 1060's the formula was first conceived. Take a sexy setting; throw in some sexy kids, who get into all sorts of crazy adventures, add a decidably un-sexy antagonist who wants to end their sexy fun, and then have the sexy kids overcome the un-sexy bad guy in the end. It started on the beach with surfboards, has migrated to lakes in such movies as the "Meatballs" franchise, traversed to the mountains in such movies as "Ski Patrol," and finally found a nice comfortable niche playing on late night USA TV. You've got the crazy kids who run the camp/resort/mountainside. Their fun is threatened by the bad dude who inevitably wants to tear it down, and the kids must somehow overcome the evil tyranny so that they can keep on partying. That's about it.

On this mountainside we've got a forlorn snowboarding instructor Rick, who had his heart broken by a French babe, yet somehow keeps missing the fact that one of his best friends is also a hottie (hmmm…do you think they'll end up together in the end???) The mountain where Rick works is filled with his freewheeling buds that are just trying to find a good time in all the mucky muck. They snowboard by day, party by night. The mountain's owner has decided to sell to the corporate bigwig, who subsequently changes their mountain into a more polished resort. Kids don't like it, decide to do something about it, yada yada yada…they save the day in the end and Rick gets the girl. Thank-you, goodnight.

Turn on any late night movie channel and you've probably already seen this one before. It's only mildly watchable, typically much easier to swallow when you've got a six-pack and a bunch of drunken friends to hoot and holler with, wondering when cable TV is going to lift the no-nudity ban on its stations. Inevitably though, even the skinamatography is nothing but a tease (which brings me to this point- why do you bring in 'Playmate of the Year' Victoria Silvstedt and then not let her, you know, act??? She's only good at one thing, so let her show off her, uh, talents!), the story is boring and paper thin, and all you're really left with is the potential for cool snowboarding scenes. Alas, this one can't even deliver on that front, strangely enough because the actors can't snowboard. It's a mess, and it is bad. I will always wonder how such vehicles as this one ever get enough funding to actually make it to the theaters, when there are dozens more exactly like it sitting in the straight-to-discount-video bin at any Blockbuster.

Oh, there are some wicked snowboarding shots DURING THE ENDING CREDITS (evil trickery). They are truly amazing/sickening to watch, since most of them involve somebody doing a trick and then practically falling to their death. If that's what you want to see, I'd suggest turning to ESPN's X-Games. At least then you can turn the volume down.

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