You've seen this underdog material done before, from the sublime Rocky to the embarrassingly cliched (virtually any Rocky sequel). Cool Runnings taps both qualities. At one end you've got the Jamaican team, a colorful, contrived bunch of squabblers who predictably learn to pull together and defy their detractors (mainly a rival team of stereotyped East German Nazi-Commie storm troopers). But then comes the real-world finale, when the heroes lose the race but achieve a much greater goal, symbolizing what the Olympics truly mean to athletes around the globe. Seldom in sports movies has defeat looked so noble.

Younger viewers may want to learn more about Olympic bobsledding, or Jamaica, if only to sort out the facts from the fiction. The novice 1988 Jamaican bobsledders were actually conceived by a businessman and an ex-diplomat, and they did wipe out in the midst of a spectacular performance. "Irv," however, and the other characters are screenwriter inventions, and they seem like it.