Out Cold

While some awesome helicopter shots of showboating snowboarders on powdery 70-degree inclines open and close Out Cold, it's what's in between that's problematic. An elementary comedy about party-hardy slope bums trying to save their quiet ski town from a greedy developer with visions of condos and four dollar lattes, the film's sporadic bursts of funny dialogue and the occasional creative sight gag (a bar's Men's Room door leads outside, where guys write their names in the snow) aren't enough to make up for the stock characters, cameos by talentless Playboy playmates, endless drunk-and-horny filler gags and two weak snowboarding sequences so badly edited that they're actually boring. What might have been a Caddyshack of winter sports, ends up--in the hands of inexperienced and bumbling directors Brendan and Emmett Malloy--stuck on the bunny slope. Not recommended. (R. Blackwelder)