COOL RUNNINGS

Here's the short version: this is a very enjoyable film, well-acted, and one of Disney's better efforts of its era. It promotes friendship, integrity, hard work, and teamwork, and it takes real care to honor the importance of family support. It even manages a thoughtful lesson on competition — that winning isn't the whole point.

The only real caution is a small amount of mild foul language: nine mild obscenities and one profanity. There's also a brief fistfight, but nothing graphic. Alcohol shows up once in a bar scene, though tellingly the teammates themselves toast with Coca-Cola instead.

The story is predictable if you know the history, but predictable isn't the same as unrewarding — it's still quite enjoyable from start to finish. This is good, wholesome fun that deserves to be a hit in your house too. Simple answer: watch it together, and use the mild language as a two-minute conversation, not a dealbreaker.

Jamaican sprinter Derrice Bannock is destined to qualify for the Olympics — until a disastrous trial wrecks that dream. Determined to follow in his father's footsteps anyway, he sets his sights on an unlikelier path: building Jamaica's first-ever bobsled team from scratch. He recruits four unlikely partners for a sport their tropical island has no business competing in. What happens when they actually reach the ice is where the real story begins — and where we'll leave you.

Four stars means this one earns its praise. The performances carry it — Leon, Doug E. Doug, Rawle D. Lewis, Malik Yoba, and John Candy all turn in good, engaging work that makes an underdog story feel fresh even when the beats are familiar.

Yes, it's a bit predictable — most audiences already know the shape of this true story. But the film doesn't lean on surprise; it leans on charm, chemistry, and heart, and that's enough to carry it. Coming after a run of more offensive Disney releases that summer, this was the studio returning to a winning formula, and the formula works.

This is a film built around values Scripture actually celebrates: honesty, integrity, hard work, perseverance, self-sacrifice, redemption, and friendship. It takes family support seriously as something that matters to a young man chasing a dream. And it does something rarer than most sports movies bother with — it teaches a real lesson about the relative importance of winning, rather than treating victory as the only thing worth caring about.

There's also a small, specific moral moment worth noting: cheating is named plainly as the biggest mistake of one character's life, not glossed over or excused. That's the kind of clarity families can build a conversation around.

Nothing here distorts or removes a biblical view of character; if anything, it models one. The film's heart — five outsiders pouring everything into a race most people expected them to lose — echoes a truth Scripture states directly: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). Perseverance toward a worthy goal, run with integrity, is exactly the kind of race this movie is honoring.

This is a warm, funny, well-made film about people who refuse to quit — and it earns its praise honestly. A little mild language is worth a family conversation, not a reason to skip it. Same answer we opened with: worth the trip.