Just a few odd/amusing bits from this great little movie:
- it has, to my knowledge, perhaps the best continuity error i've ever seen; during their calamitous run down that hill, where they narrowly escape that woman and her goats - you clearly see them lose the front right wheel of their "bobsled" in a long shot (you can quite awesomely actually see it dislodge + go bouncing down the hill...) whereupon it rather fantastically appears back on in the next shot that the wheel well appears in, just seconds after its disastrous decampment.
- the man who gives mr. candy a whole lot of guff while john's trying to get them signed in - i have NEVER seen a balding pattern quite like it - it, well, really rather astounds me that something like that is in a big disney movie...not that there's anything wrong with bald or balding men (for we, all of us, have "maturing" hairlines - sorry, ladies), it's just that HIS case looks like the freaking MANGE; not normal male-pattern baldness. i just found it...enormously distracting (i mean, how on EARTH would a person NOT shave their heads with that kind of...awe-inspiring hair topographical situation!?)
- was this NOT Hans Zimmer's last score (certainly his last working for Disney) before Oscar Glory with his masterpiece of a score for "The Lion King"?? if so, the gap between this score and the 'lion king' score may very well be THE biggest 'quality-gap' of any composer, ever. The music in this film, mostly 'Jamerican' steel drum cues whenever something goofy, funny, or otherwise 'good' occurs on screen and, well, of course the over-the-top triumphant, soaring strings signifying that whatever is going on onscreen ought to be warming your heart, is 'hired gun' work from Zimmer, who was very likely already preparing for 'Lion King', and so wrote this stuff before bed one night - perhaps during the time between taking an Ambien and the onset of the medication's sleep-inducing effects. 30...45 minutes, tops. - - - "The Lion King", however... (admittedly "Amerfrican" in parts...but just...so so beautifully composed that it transcends any and all such complaints), is perfect. for example, the cut entitled "This Land" - as good as anything on "Star Wars", "Lord of the Rings", "Inception"...ANY Soundtrack i can think of! it might just, MIGHT JUST be my all-time favorite piece of music ever written for a film. Not a single note is out of place, it is...again...perfect.
- Junior's father shows up in the Olympic Village in Calgary after a three thousand mile trip (he couldn't phone? or, hilariously, send another telegram??) with designs on taking his wayward son home. (This, after we see one of the other team mate's mother crying with un-believable pride at her son's utterly fantastic achievement...) - i mean, YES this is a Disney film, but Disney/Pixar movies aren't this fiendishly dumb (with the noted and indeed exceptional exceptions of both Cars 1 and 2). THEN DAD STICKS AROUND to show off his pride, in the audience, somehow at the front! what a guy!!
- i really, really don't care how, on the first day they actually compete, they are indeed what they always feared they'd turn out to be: a laughingstock. everything they're supposed to be doing out there, they do wrong, wrong WRONG - but then, after a(nother) John Candy pep talk about "being Jamaican" and all that good, patriotic stuff, they totally kick ass the next day. That's just...not good screen-writing. what did they change in the second race, compared to the first?? There needs to be a REASON for these things, don't you think??