[New post] Hot Dog…The Movie (Film Review)

Movie Review
Hot Dog...The Movie
1984
Starring: Patrick Houser, David Naughton
Directed by: Peter Markle

Very rarely does a film come along where you think it’s going to be bad, but it can’t be terrible. Whenever I watch a movie, I try to keep an open mind because, occasionally, I’m surprised how good a movie is despite its ridiculous premise. Unfortunately, Peter Markle's Hot Dog...the Movie (because so many people confuse movies with food) is worse than one could possibly imagine. The plot, acting, and dialogue is so bad, one must think the only reason why this movie was made was so that a bunch of skiers could expense their holiday vacation.

Harkin Banks (Patrick Houser) dreams of becoming a world champion skier. He leaves home and drives cross-country to compete in an international skiing event. Along the way, he meets a girl named Sunny (Tracy Smith) and she joins him on his journey. At the ski event, he befriends the Rat Pack, a bunch of has-been or out-to-lunch skiers who are more interested in having fun than winning. Harkin also crosses paths with his main competitor, Rudi Garmisch (John Patrick Reger), who immediately has it out for Harkin and wants nothing more to crush Harkin’s dreams before they come true.

Let’s get the few positives out of the way: this movie has a couple of gags that are funny.

Okay, with the positives out of the way, let’s get into this mess of a film. The general plot of rookie challenging a world champion for the trophy is fine. Supporting lines don’t make sense at all. For example, Harkin and Sunny become a couple, but then Sunny starts making eyes at other guys, so Harkin responds by sleeping with skier Sylvia (Shannon Tweed). Sunny sees this and gets upset so she sleeps with Rudi, who is currently with Sylvia (even though she is known to act really friendly around other men). When it all comes out, everyone is pissed at each other. Rudi thinks he gets one-up on Harkin but then gets upset when he finds out about Harkin and Sylvia. Sunny leaves but then she comes back for whatever reason (nothing is explained). It’s just a mess.

The movie heavily focuses on skiing and while the final competition is a race, all the competitions depend on artistic scores. This means that a solid part of the movie contains lots of footage of people doing fancy things on skis. If you love ski ballet, this movie is probably going to rank high for you, but otherwise, it gets dull after a few seconds. It never feels exciting and the paint-by-numbers nature of the film (nothing is unpredictable in this movie) takes away any potential excitement that these scenes try to evoke.

Hot Dog…The Movie is an awful. It’s not that funny, the storylines are a mess, the gratuitous nudity and sex jokes (that sometimes are completely reprehensible) are a weak attempt to add flavour to a dull movie. Peter Markle can't be proud of this. Perhaps there was a time and place for gimmicky sports and sex movies, but this movie isn’t decent enough to be given a break for being made during a time when crap like this was considered acceptable.

Rating: 1 out of 5.