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“Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it’s bobsled time.”

Cool Runnings is a fictionalized version of the route four Jamaican men took to the Olympics in 1988. Derice Bannock (Leon) is one of the fastest runners in Jamaica, but his Olympic dreams are dashed during the qualifying race. That is, until he finds out that an American named Irving Blitzer (John Candy) lives on the island. Irv wanted to try to make a bobsled team out of sprinters years ago, but Derice’s father didn’t like the idea.

“Twenty years ago you came down here to see if you could make a Jamaican into a bobsledder,” Derice says to Irv. “You never got that chance. Look at me. I am your chance. Take it.”

Irv does. With some difficulty, Irv and Derice recruit Sanka Coffie (Doug E. Doug), scary Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba), and timid Junior Bevil (Rawle D. Lewis) for their four-man team.

They have three months to practice a sport that the four Jamaicans had never heard of before. Irv’s coaching tactics include making Sanka sit in an ice cream machine to grow accustomed to the cold.

Finally, the team arrives in Calgary for the trials. They have to qualify to be able to compete in the Winter Games. Unfortunately, they are outsiders, amateurs, and it appears that they aren’t good at bobsledding. Derice sees the Swiss team take a practice run down the bobsledding track. Leon does a brilliant job in this short scene. I saw Derice’s dream change from running to bobsledding in an instant. Derice attempts to be a success at bobsledding by copying everything the Swiss do: smacking his teammates on their helmets to get them fired up and counting to three in Swiss before each run. This throws his team members off and makes them more worse than when they started.

Irv is afraid to get back into bobsledding because, during the 1972 Olympics, he cheated. When he was caught cheating he was stripped of his two gold metals. He knows that the veterans of the sport will not welcome him back. When Derice finds out that Irv cheated, he asks why. Irv tells him that he had to win.

“A gold metal is a wonderful thing. But if you aren’t enough without it you’ll never be enough with it” Irv says.
“How will I know I am enough?” Derice asks.
“When you cross the finish line,” Irv responds, “you will know.”

Junior Bevil has wealthy parents who feel they have humored his athletic aspirations enough. His father secures a job for him at the brokerage firm Webster, Webster, and Cohen. Instead, Junior sells his car and goes to Calgary with the rest of the guys. It is only there that Yule helps him realize that he is not a lost little boy anymore but a “bada** mother who don’t take no crap from nobody.” When his father comes to claim him, Junior stands up to him for the first time in his life.

“I am not a lost little boy. I am a man and an Olympian and I am staying right here.”

Yule Brenner feels trapped on the island and only agrees to join the bobsledding team as a way off the island. He, too, is looking for something more. When Sanka tells him that the picture of his dream home is actually a picture of Buckingham Palace, he begins to feel his dream fade. Junior tells him that if he works hard enough, he’ll get his palace.

In Cool Runnings, it is Sanka who is comfortable in his own skin. It is he who reminds the team that they have to be who they are and be proud of it.

“When the Swiss…” Derice says.
“Would you shut up about the da** Swiss,” Sanka says. “It was all that nonsense that got us all nervous in the first place.”
“Look here. I’m just trying to get us off on the right foot,” Derice returns.
“The right foot for us is not the Swiss foot. […] We can’t be copying nobody else’s style. We’ve got our own style. […] Let me tell you something rasta. I didn’t come up here to forget where I am and where I come from.”
“Neither did I,” Derice says. “I’m just trying to be the best I can be.”
“So am I. And the best I can be is Jamaican,” Sanka says. “Derice, I am telling you as a friend, if we look Jamaican, walk Jamaican, talk Jamaican, and is Jamaican, then we sure as hell better bobsled Jamaican.”

The next day the Jamaicans arrive for their run singing a song from back home. Finally they’ve stopped trying to be what they think they should be or what others expect of them. They are ready for their next attempt at an Olympic metal. I won’t give away the ending in case you decide to watch the film.

Cool Runnings is a hilarious romp from Jamaica to Calgary and back, but it’s got heart too. The characters – Derice, Junior, Yule, and Irv – are looking for themselves and their way. During their time on screen, they find it.