Ski Patrol

source: Ski Patrol

I saw the movie when it first came out...I was a kid so of course it was hilarious. Now it just has it's moments. It was the original Out Cold. Same plot, different actors. Only to me Out Cold was more fun. The best thing about it this movie to me is that some of the music used in the movie is by Steve Morse Band. Being a huge Steve Morse Band fan you could put a song by them in the worst movie of all time and I'd watch it just to hear Steve Morse Band. Overall I'd say give it a chance because there are a few funny scenes. I caught it on satellite and had a few laughs but not like when I was a kid. But if it's between this and Out Cold (2001), I'd go with Out Cold if you want a funny movie.(Unless you're a SMB fan!)

Why is Ski Patrol not on DVD??? It is a true classic of the perhaps cheesy and clichéd, but wonderfully fun and endearing genre group of 1980s/early-90s B-Comedies. This movie is pure, silly, unironic fun - it's hard to find a movie like this these days. George Lopez is great in his first acting role - And everyone needs to see Paul Feig's MJ-inspired dance sequence. He tears it up! As well as his onstage performance with 'Iceman' to win the talent show and thus save the Ski Patrol from the evil young blond yuppie Lance and his devious developer boss. Intrigued? That's what I thought - Ski Patrol is the ultimate B-Comedy cult film, the genre that the DVD format was made for!! Let's see a release soon, eh? - taste death, live life!

Not sure what the hell I was thinking but I dug out an old rental tape of this movie that somehow wound up in my collection and watched it last night. Life is short, ninety minutes of one's existence may not seem like a long time but there will probably come a point in my life where I will regret having invested the time needed to let this movie play, though I may not remember the title. The movie is an interesting study in failure, actually. There's some decent talent involved: Ray Walston out-classes everyone else in the film as "Pops", the owner of a ski resort that scurrilous Martin Mull tries to swindle away from him. Ubiquitous 80s "token black guy" actor T.K. Carter -- an effective presence in stuff like THE THING and SOUTHERN COMFORT -- puts on the Stepin Fetchit routine for a couple of musical numbers where he karaoke's along with a boom box system, aping black performers like Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Little Richard ... One wonders if he was aware of the characiture he was manipulated into creating. The oblique racist attitudes in the film continue with George Lopez doing a Rodney Dangerfield impersonation to amuse a young Latino tyke who doesn't get the joke until Lopez repeats it in Spanish. Then there is the family of vacationing Japanese tourists with their cameras who jabber excitedly to one another in their own language & snap pictures of the same things. There's also a "little person" ski patrol supervisor who's diminutive stature is the butt of several potentially cruel jokes. Perhaps one of the redeeming qualities of the film is that it's a repository of the innocently offensive pre-political correctness era. There's even a PETA baiting sequence where mice are somewhat callously handled on screen before being released en-masse to disrupt an awards banquet. There were a couple of unintentionally funny moments like the bad guy "preppie" ski patrol members decked out in their intricately patterned fashion sweaters during a fireside discussion scene, as well as a climactic trashing of a giant wiener mobile on skis. I'm not sure they were meant to be funny but they provided the sole bright spots in the film, which to me looked like a colossal waste of talent, time, and money. The budget for the film was modest but could have been used to feed starving 3rd worlders or maybe build a school for disadvantaged American kids crowded into classrooms staffed by ineffectual teachers. Instead, someone bankrolled this movie, which quickly went out of print. If you read the other comments posted here one theme is shared by those with a favorable opinion of the film, which is nostalgia. Most of them encountered the film as kids or as home video rental choices, which is really the only purpose I can see for the film even existing in the first place. Then again if the plug line "From the creator of POLICE ACADEMY" doesn't make you cringe with disdain there's probably nothing that could dissuade you from wasting your own time watching it. For the most part the movie is a harmless waste of time that probably won't win over any new converts and as an out-of-print video title unavailable on DVD still provides some curiosity value. What's most curious, however, is the apparent enthusiasm that most of the cast displays while on-screen. Nobody behaves in a rational or realistic manner, everything is all gonzo, hyperactive and unreal, festooned with a sheen of late 1980s fashion sensibilities that make one wonder what the hell we were collectively thinking back then. SKI PATROL is thusly a repository of out of date ideas, fashions and values that hopefully won't ever be revisited by our culture, though it is always great to see Ray Walston owning some hotshot covered with spilled mustard. 3/10

I saw Ski Patrol for the first time as roughly a fifth grader in about 92 on one of the premium channels at a friend's house who had an old school projection television. Those circumstances set the scene for the innocence and nostalgia that comes to mind when I see this film again as a working professional. Perhaps without having seen this excellent movie under said circumstances, I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much considering the early nineties fashion and overall cheesiness of the film. Ski Patrol is dated, but really good. It makes me wonder why Police Academy had several sequels yet Ski Patrol had none. The answer is box office take, I guess. Anyway, I love this movie! All audiences could take away great enjoyment from it. There is a camaraderie that is present in the Ski patrolers that will capture you. Cool ski stunts interwoven into the storyline will keep your attention. Genuinely funny comedic situations will make you laugh. Breathtaking scenery of the snowy mountains of Utah will capture your eye and make you wish you were there. Let's not forget that skiing makes winter worth it. That is a principal that this film will teach you whether you are a skier or not.

Rich Correll was Richard Rickover on Leave It to Beaver and helped Harold Lloyd preserve his film as a teen, a role he still works on. He's directed tons of TV, like a hundred episodes of Hanna Montana. He also produced the Police Squad! TV series and worked with Police Academy's Paul Maslansky to make this somewhat forgotten 1990 teen comedy. Ray Walston and Martin Mull are the grown-up good and bad guys in this story of a ski lodge being sold to make a mall, because in 1990 malls and avarice were things, not that they aren't things right now. George Lopez and Paul Feig - yes, the very same man who would make Freaks and Geeks and less famously, the 2016 Ghostbusters - make early appearances. This was released the same year as Ski School, which got a sequel, while this movie had none of its planned follow-ups. There's a wacky guy who has multiple faces thanks to a mask that allows him to continually talk to himself. That's pretty much the highlight of this film. I'd like to say that these are a genre in and out of themselves, but seeing as how this is posted during a week of Police Academy-ripoffs, I can tell you that they are basically beach movies, which are the same thing as Porky's movies, which are the same thing as Meatballs ripoffs, which are also all really Animal House ripoffs. I still watch every single one of them.

This film is basically one of the poorer 'Police Academy' sequels on skis with the usual rag-tag bunch of 'hilarious' oddballs. Watch this film if you like seeing someone out of control on their skis shooting down a mountain going "Whooooaaaa...AHHHH..WHHHHOOOAAA etc" every 4 minutes. Haven't seen this for some time but if I remember correctly a hot-dog cabin or something takes a slide at some point. As per Police Academy there's the 'badguy' rival who is trying to get our heroes shut down. I think they end up entering a dancing/singing competition or something in the local bar cos they need to raise money to save the 'ski patrol' or something like that. As is always the way the local bar offers a prize massively out of proportion to what the bar would hope to make from the extra custom such an event attracts;like $10,000 or something instead of a few free drinks that you get at such things in real life. Watch this if you love your 80's style 'screwball' ensemble cast comedies and have watch 'Police Academy 1-8' too many times, or if you are traumatised by a near fatal 'runaway ski' accident and watching 20+ recreations of your accident in a humorous context will help you get over it.

The Second Best Comedy Ever Made. The first of course is, "It's a Mad, Mad, World". This comedy is not stop hilarious. It's even more funny if you've actually been skiing. My favorite character is the guy with, "rocket skis". If you like the movie, "Airplane" or, "Animal House" you will also like Ski Patrol. It's sort of the good guys versus bad guys done in a very comical and wintry way. Everything about this movie is over the top. I highly recommend it. It's great having this movie in my Blu-ray collection.

After over a decade of searching for this movie... I have finally found it available on DVD. I am letting you know the website only because I know there are many people who value and cherish this movie, and will do whatever they can to help others who have been searching over the years. I do not know much about the company, but I received (2) copies within 2 weeks of placing the order. The video quality is rough, but it matches the 80's style of the movie anyway. Ski Patrol is the true cult classic for any 1980's skier who idolizes Glen Plake, the glory of the 215cm straight skis, and the power of Neon at its prime. check it out at classic time video dot com;) "Live life, taste death"

I bought this movie for 80 cents and was pretty disappointed. I was expecting something even remotely funny. Crude, but funny like Police Academy (made by the same folks). It had Ray Walston, a cute dog that farts and belches, a psycho named 'Suicide'(comparable to Bill Murray in Caddyshack), and an obnoxious, yet funny ski patrol supervisor. The plot is simple: the "bad guys"--a land developer looking to take over the popular ski resort owned by the "good guys" uses his evildoer ski team to sabotage the resort so they'd flunk the safety inspection. The movie has its funny moments at times. A few quick wit jokes here and there (and I do emphasize few). There's the running gag about the psychotic skier who tries all these downhill methods in order to "taste death while living life." And there's the short ski patrol supervisor who is convinced that he is getting taller (I liked pretty much any of the scenes with him in it as he may've been the only saving grace to the movie), and T.K. Carter was funny. But there's not enough going on with the plot. In fact, about 80% of the movie is just long scenes of downhill racing or downhill hijinks and of course, dancing (as it was made in the 1980s). Unfortunately, the movie is not all that funny and not all the fun to watch, no matter how much of stupid comedy it is. And to top it off, the climax was just plain ridiculous. ***SPOILERS*** The short guy gets stuck on a mountain when he swerves his snowmobile to avoid a tree knocked over by 'Suicide'. He's left hanging on the mountain, and soon enough, so is the dog. Yep. Just dangling there, even when he moves around too much. Martin Mull, the slimeball character, gets stuck in a hot dog snack stand which had broken loose from the platform and floated downhill and, what do you know, conveniently stops just before the end of the cliff. So Jerry, the glory boy of the ski patrol first ties a rope to the thin wired flag (like an antennea on your car hood) first and then hangs on to the rope before tying it to a wimpy tree. All this, while Mull is moving around enough that the damn hot dog stand would have fallen over. I'm not saying they had to be so realistic, but at least pay attention to detail. And the final scene is a chase where somehow, Jerry manages to hog tie the ski team leader that sabotaged them without ever having to make any sort of knot. The rest of the film may not have been so bad, but the ending is just plain horrible. Could the sequel be better?