Frostbite (2005) / Comedy

MPAA Rated: R for language, crude humor, sexual humor, drug use, and nudity
Running Time: 83 min.

Cast: Adam Grimes, Carmen Nicole, Peter Jason, Traci Lords, Baelyn Neff, Ron Zimmerman, Phil Morris, Scott Valentine, Matt Baker, Troy Bellinghausen, Rick Overton, Adam Crosby, Gus Farwell, Oliver Macready, Kareem Mathews, Maite Schwartz, Christian Oliver
Director: Jonathan Schwartz
Screenplay: Paul Miller, Steve Rogers, Kevin Rooney
Review published January 30, 2005

The blurb on the DVD's cover reads "Warning: Snowboarding has never been this hot!"  If "hot" translates to "fresh, steaming pile of dung", I'm inclined to agree.  This straight-to-video release should have been straight-to-dumpster, as it's difficult to imagine finding an audience so starved for entertainment that they would ever want to add this to their collection.  This might even include snowboarding aficionados, who are probably tired of being portrayed as nothing more than potheads and frat boys.  Despite the film being interspersed with obligatory cutaway scenes of nameless, faceless snowboarders, this is the same lowbrow teen sex comedy you've seen time and again on cable, with T&A, crude sexual humor, and tacky characters galore.

Adam Grimes stars as Billy Wagstaff, whose dreams of being a top-notch snowboarder are finally about to be realized when he is accepted into an elite snowboarding academy.  With lifelong friend Casey (Carmen Nicole) in tow, Billy is ready for action, only to find that the community is bitterly divided between the "richies" (those with wealth) and "poories" (those without), and being a poorie, he's treated second rate among the other Academy participants.  Other dangers lurk, as the lead instructor, Colonel Jaffe (Peter Jason, Ghosts of Mars), is a hard-as-nails jackass who runs the show like a drill sergeant. 

The humor is totally off-color and excessively juvenile, and one wonders whether they even bothered to start filming with a completed script, despite the fact that three screenwriters are attached to it.  Toilet humor and sophomoric gags is what the 83-minute movie mostly consists of, in addition to being padded with frequent rest periods of well-shot but unnecessary snowboarding action.  However, without these scenes, Frostbite wouldn't even have reached an hour in length, as the film itself ends (quite mercifully, I think) around the 75 minute mark, only to tack on some not-too-funny outtakes, slow-crawling closing credits, and a deleted scene that was not funny enough to keep in the movie, and definitely not worth sticking around for at the end.  Pretty much every scene before the end credits could have been deleted as well, as far as I'm concerned.

Ex-porn star Traci Lords gets the only billing here, which is fine if you like her airbags (she doesn't get nude, so pervs, save your money).  Moviemaking this lackluster should have been changed to the more appropriate title, "Snow Bored".  Don't waste your time -- Frostbite bites big ones.

Qwipster's rating:

©2005 Vince Leo