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Anyone who grabs this DVD case at the video stacks and yells something like "Oooh, Snowboard Academy!" already has their fair share of issues, but it takes a special person to look past a cast list that includes Jim Varney and Brigitte Nielsen and Corey Haim. Are you that adventurous of a movie-watcher?

The answer should, of course, be a resounding NO. PG-rated (and therefore bereft of the naked boobies that would normally explain the existence of a movie this keeningly inept) and laden with pathetically broad humor and amazingly atrocious filmmaking technique, Snowboard Academy is even worse than the combined awfulness of the cast, the screenplay and even the DVD cover. (And that's saying a lot.)

The plot is your painfully familiar "save the mountain by staging a competition that will conveniently require about 35 minutes of stock snowboarding footage" - intercut with heaping doses of sophomoric pratfalls that would have even the goofiest 10-year-old rolling his eyes in exasperated disbelief. (Would you believe this movie has Jim Varney fall down a lot? And the comedy just gets more creative after that!)

Look, if you've got the itch for an awful comedy that somehow involves people sliding down hills of snow, do yourself a relative favor and seek out something like Ski School or Hot Dog: The Movie or Out Cold or Ski Patrol.

Those ones at least have a few naked breasts wedged in amidst the unfunny tedium and the endless footage of skiers skiing.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=9585&reviewer=128
originally posted: 05/11/04 10:41:54
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