Movie Review: Ski School

When in 1991, Moviestore Entertainment (Yes that's really the companies name) announced that they would be basing their next movie on the windows classic video game "Ski Free," they were met with some skepticism. Detractors commented that Video game adaptations were almost always terrible. (reference the Atari game E.T. and the horrible movie made out of it.) More fuel was added to the "Fuck Ski School" fire when it was announced that the movie would be a sports and sex comedy. How could a game with such a serious plot as Ski Free be played up for laughs on the big screen?

Perhaps the genre of Sports and Sex Comedy was not the correct term. I prefer to classify Ski School as an avaunt garde exploration of the limits of film that forgoes all traces of traditional plot or character development.

The film opens with a montage that cuts between slow motion shots of ski stunts and regular motion shots of young revelers at some sort of modern Bacchanalia. Though the film never completely gives up on slow motion, most of the remainder of the film is presented in regular motion.

The film proper starts with a cold open. Expecting us to be able to identify the characters without any sort of introduction. And we can!

The characters in this film all represent archetypes based on those of classical mythology. Many of the characters do not have names, or at least, this reviewer does not recall them being named.

The dark haired dopey looking guy plays the rogue-ish good guy with a checked past. Similar to Han Solo or Robin Hood, he is talented and Capable but undisciplined and not adverse to breaking the law to do what he thinks is right. Most of what he thinks is right seems to be partying and sneaking peaks at girls while they are undressing.

The brown haired good looking guy that always wears all black is the bad guy. He is also talented and capable but he is a douche. He has a hot girlfriend (not named) but shows absolutely no interest in having sex with her.

The other dopey looking guys are the comic relief/side kicks. They are not talented or capable but love partying just as much as the dark haired dopey looking guy. They fill much the same role as Friar Tuck, Little John, C3PO and R2D2. Needless to say their shenanigans are hilarious.

Finally there is the Blond haired good looking guy. He is new to Ski School and is eager to impress people. He has a vast natural talent for skiing and a pure heart. He is the Luke Skywalker of the movie.

Although the plot is made of of a series of vignettes that are loosely related at best, a common thread does seem to occur. The good main characters are are in some sort of skiing competition against the bad character and his team of expert skiers. Although the competition involves skiing proficenctly the main characters prepare for this competition by drinking massive quantities of alcohol and tricking women into taking their clothing off.

Also at one point two of the comic relief good guys hypnotise the third comic relief good guy into thinking he can no longer have sexual intercourse. This clearly hearkens back to the fear of feminine power and castration that provaded so many ancient Greek myths. The character then spends most of the rest of the movie explaining to various women exactly why he will not have sex with them. It is hilarious.

After this point the plot becomes difficult to follow. It is difficult at times to determine if the films plot is progressing in a linear fashion or if it is going out of order similar to Memento.

Also in keeping with the non traditional nature of the films construction the movie seems to keep introducing important characters throughout its entire running time. In a movie that had any sort of character development this would be a problem. But in Ski School a character introduced within the last ten minutes of the film can be just as developed as a character introduced in the first ten seconds.

The film does break with its source material in several areas. Mainly the inclusion of dozens of pairs of naked breasts and the lack of the original "yeti eats you" ending of the game.

Many critics also commented that extending the running time from the original 1.4 minutes to the extended length of slightly more than an hour made the movie unwatchable. I believe that these reviewers were missing the point that many of the events represented in the film were happening simultaneously in 4 dimensional space time. If the film were compressed down to the its linear events I believe that it would only run 10-15 minutes longer than the original game.

All truth be told, the movie does have some flaws. The motivations of the female characters are never quite explained. For example, the female characters are clearly only motivated by sex, but they never explain why they spend so much time hanging out with the grown haired good looking bad guy, who has little to no interest in sex. In fact unlike the Good Guys he never ONCE sexually harasses a woman. I do not know why these poor sex starved women would spend so much time with him. This incongruity really took me out of the movie in any scene featuring the brown haired good looking bad guy and his hot girlfriend. Luckily one of our main characters is up to the challenge of satisfying her carnal urges.

The ending of the film appropriately devolves into madness as the Good Guys and Bad Guys use various wacky methods to try to cheat each other out of victory on the ski slopes. I will not spoil the ending, but it is good. (lets just say that the wacky good guy isn't the only person who gets hypnotised over the course of the film!)

Eventually the film ends but the emotions it stirs up will stick with you for years. Sometimes I like to rate things on a scale of one to five, but I will use a qualitative measure for Ski School. Ski School is Life Altering. This is a paradigm shattering movie that proves that comedies don't have to be funny or even make sense.