Did I ever tell you about the time I invented snowboarding? . Out Cold tries hard to capture the tween audiences without fully using the infamous "raunch" button to be successful.  It tries hard to give the audience a graceful combination of physical humor, sexual slap-stick, classic Hollywood references, and X-treme sport clips, but in the end it face plants hard into the cinematic pavement.  While I will not be generous to this film, I will begin this review by mentioning how proud I am of Out Cold.  Again, this was nowhere near a good film, but as a person that watches films on a consistent basis, I saw Out Cold as a film that tried really hard to be humorous, original, and creative, but just failed miserably.  One must give credit to those films that fail while trying, because so many films today just, honestly, fail to try.  Unoriginality seems to be a common theme among these tween films, as big boobs, beer drinking, and cliché characters invade the screen more often than humorous dialogue that invades your mind and into modern culture.  Out Cold aims towards a general audience that I despise.  That audience is one that will pay top dollar for stupid humor that demonstrates no talent and a considerable lack of creativity.  Why do we, as audience members, do that?  Is it that difficult for us to laugh at intelligent humor?  While Out Cold did not begin the trend in Hollywood, it did contribute to it, and thus continuing films like Date Movie, American Wedding, and Dude, Where's My Car to plague our theaters.    I think I have spoken enough about my personal belief on why this film was a wart on the back of Hollywood, so let's look at actual reasons why this film tried and failed.  I have to get this first one out in the open.  Why, painfully I ask this question, did the filmmakers see the quality in combining tween humor, snowboarding, and Casablanca together in one film?  The first two matched, but the last was just pure rubbish.  Outside of an adult audience, not many children or teens would catch the classic Hollywood film reference, thus completely ruining the remains of a dying film genre.  Now, when the audience of Out Cold actually connect Casablanca to Out Cold, they will say lines like "This movie is just like Out Cold".  This makes me so angry.  If parents would raise their children correctly in film most will say, "Out Cold took quite a bit from Casablanca", instead of the other way around.  Casablanca needs to come first.  With that said, our biggest pitfall to this film was the characters.  Were there any?  Great question!  I didn't see any.  Instead, I saw actors reacting to certain situations.  There were no definitions to anyone.  Sure, one could argue that there were some "characters" with Pig Pen and Inga, but when I see these moments, I see clichés, not characters.  Anyone can play a druggie, stoner, big-breasted woman, town idiot, and so forth, but it is how that actor chooses to redefine that overused character that really sets a film apart from the rest.  Nothing of the sort happened here.  Jason London was horrid as the title character, and his supposed girlfriend was as bland as Illinois.  Jason's friends were obnoxiously unexciting and Lee Majors walked on set, said his lines, and walked off.  Again, there was nothing of value.  Nobody went beyond the lines on their script, which ultimately hurt the overall viewing experience of this film.    If I were to pick one element that kept this film from completely drowning would be the use of David Koechner, of whom I cannot help but laugh at whenever he opens his mouth.  He is the prime example of what I was hoping the direction would be for these filmmakers.  He was a unique character for Bull Mountain and thus created some of the better lines for the film, if only the rest of the cast would have taken his lead.  Yet, I do not blame the cast for it all, the filmmakers (the Malloy brothers) had to make the underlying decision to either make another tween film, or sharpen the humor and aim towards a smarter audience.  As you may or may not have noticed, they went with the latter.  The entire "King of the Mountain" bit was horrendous, not because of the storyline element, but the fact that everyone's beer was flying, nobody recognized anyone, and only the characters we were familiar with were winners.  Just disrespectful to the rest of those that inhabits Bull Mountain.  The funniest bit that I think the Malloys were able to pull off were the brotherly pranks pulled when one was too drunk.  The first one with the polar bear was not funny (rather juvenile), but the one with the car continues to put a smile on my face.  It was this type of humor that I was expecting the entire film, but overall continued to keep falling short.     Overall, Out Cold felt like your last pick to be your date for prom.  Sure, there were some elements that were decent enough to smile at, but most of the time you were embarrassed to be seen with her in public.  I am tired of this tween genre of film, and while I know that due to an increasing decline in intelligence in our theaters we will only continue to see more of this type of movie, I am still tired of it.  It is as if most directors are just using the "cut & paste" feature on their editing machines bringing us the same jokes that have been told once with success, but over time, they just become boring.  Again, I will say that of most of the films in this genre, Out Cold did try a bit harder to be beyond the mold, but in the end it was nothing spectacular.  I don't think I could muster the strength to watch it again.    Grade: ** out of ****
Output: NEG