User reviews

Bored and not able to sleep, I caught this film on late night television last night. I was intrigued by the opening credits, especially when I saw the names of fine Canadian actor Paul Gross and another favourite Trevor Eve, who starred in the wonderful British mystery series Heat of the Sun. I am also a fan of the old Chicago Hope, and it was nice to see Peter Berg in a very different role.

I am not a ski buff, and this film is not Citizen Kane. However, I found myself enjoying this flawed piece of work very much. Sure, the plot is goofy, implausible, predictable, and full of discontinuities. But I genuinely liked the heroes, took pleasure in their successes, felt sadness in their setbacks. Other reviewers have commented already on the gorgeous location photography and the skiing.

With commercials, this film ran almost 2.5 hours on TV, and I had little difficulty sitting through it. Sure, we all knew there would be a happy ending and the good guy would get the girl, but it still was an enjoyable bit of viewing on the way.

Worth a look if you are not a ski buff but like mindless romance/action. Must-see if skiing is your life.

We got cable finally when I was ten or eleven and I must have watched this movie with my little sister twenty times. I recall first seeing Teri Polo in this film, and look how she turned out. Also, Peter Berg, an accomplished film director now. His Dexter Rutecki, though probably a poorly written part, was always resonant with me.

Then there was the rival instructor with the accent. Wasn't he in Spandau Ballet? Ah, memories. It gets certain moods right, like being in a Mountain town at the end of ski season. There's great footage of skiing and the story is probably crappy now, but it was enthralling enough for me when I was 11.

Like many skiers in Colorado, as a ritual I pull out this DVD every season to get stoked for another year.

The transformative story about a Midwesterner moving to a ski resort and finding himself is compelling and often repeated in reality here in Colorado. Although the acting and details are not all together believable, the story line is strong enough to keep one's interest between ski scenes.

As a retired ski patroller however, the crevasse scene is hard to swallow. I have never seen a water filled crevasse in the middle of winter like the one T. J. fell into while skiing in the back country. Especially near 14,000 feet. But hey, Hollywood is at sea level and it adds to the drama. Despite this naive gaff, the movie has great ski scenes featuring Doug Coombs one of the great extreme skiers. The mountain scenery is also breath taking and was clearly filmed in Aspen.

The avalanche scenes on the other hand look all to real.

I rented this movie just after it had come out on video. I knew it wasn't going to be a HotDog-ish movie, but I was still expecting something fun. I'm not even going to comment on my beefs as a skier. But as a movie in general, it was the most depressing piece of c**p ever! It just kept getting worse and worse, and the ending didn't even come close balancing off all that had happened. When it was over, I felt like my dog had just died.

I think this movie just tried to be too many things that just didn't fit together - trying to make HotDog into a chickflick while still being cool is just plain impossible.

Aspen Extreme to me is a genuine classic in that it is one of only few movies that best depicts the cultural, demographic and geographic way of life in a Rocky mountain secluded super ski resort town in the beautiful state of Colorado. In addition, the story itself portrays harmoniously with the real life vision of a young adventurous individual who has made exactly the same decisions that Gross' and Berg's characters had made. Surely there could be equivocal view points to the writer's main intent, however, anyone who has followed, skied or rode the same tracks as Gross' and Berg's characters instantly familiarizes with the care that is taken by the writer in exploiting the liberating experience of leaving home to enter into a world of majestic beauty mixed with a sport that people with a similar passion and drive share interest in. The story as well as the visual effects consistently draw back on the natural grandeur and beauty of the Rockies as well as the emotional evolution that takes place with each changing season while living in such a town that many consider to be a life influencing period in time.

"Aspen Extreme" (1993) is a ski flick about two guys from Detroit who decide to throw the dice and move to Aspen where they're hired as ski instructors. TJ is a walking stud with loads of charm (Paul Gross), but his buddy Dex, albeit likable, is a problem waiting to happen (Peter Berg). TJ catches the eye of two women: a local DJ, Robin (Teri Polo), and a high society vamp, Bryce (Finola Hughes). Meanwhile TJ and Dex seek to win an important powder skiing contest.

Someone described "Aspen Extreme" as "Top Gun on skis" and that's a good brief description as both films balance the drama with the action and have rockin' soundtracks. But there are huge differences in that "Top Gun" takes place at a prestigious military flight school and therefore involves military personnel, whereas "Aspen Extreme" is about two regular dudes who ride into Aspen with only their van and essential belongings. Furthermore, "Top Gun" takes place in San Diego, whereas "Aspen Extreme" takes place in Aspen, Colorado, where the film was shot (along with some opening scenes in Michigan).

You would think that the sport of skiing would have delivered up numerous movies over the years, but I can think of only two serious films on the topic -- this one and 1969's "Downhill Racer" with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman. Go figure. In any event, "Downhill Racer" is a favorite film of mine and "Aspen Extreme" doesn't come close to its greatness. Still, it's well-done for what it is.

There are a couple of scenes that standout: A scene where Dex foolishly decides to make some easy money as a drug courier. The sequence effectively shows how prone to paranoia you can get when you KNOW you're doing something wrong. Another scene effectively reveals a character's casual (and sick) love-'em-and-leave-'me mentality, and I'm not talking about a dude.

The mountain scenery is breathtaking, but there's one roll-your-eyes scene where one of the guys falls into a deep crevasse that has water in it (at that elevation in the middle of winter?). But, hey, it's Hollywood.

Some people complain about the film devolving into melodrama, but I never got this impression. The story takes place over the course of a couple of winters and is just showing the highlights. With the exception of the scene noted above, nothing struck me as radically over-the-top or out of the realm of possibility.

Teri Polo is a huge plus as she's very young and beautiful.

The film runs 113 minutes.

GRADE: B-

As far as skiing movies go Aspen Extreme is one of the worst I've seen. It's dull, disjointed and focuses on snow too much. The symbolism is outdated and the drug references are vulgar. However Monica Olivares is fantastic. Whenever she is on screen it lights up, her dialogue is delivered to perfection and her comic timing is immaculate. I have never been so moved by an actress so young (9). When she delivers THOSE lines i can't hold back the tears. It's a shame this is her only movie, i heard she gave up her career because she found Hollywood corrupt and moved to Bristol, England to be a lawyer(!!!). The film industry is all the poorer for it.

If you're a skier or a fan of the mountain, then this old school ski movie is a classic you don't wanna miss. Hardly a blockbuster but a great watch, the film is very much the skiing lifestyle of two young guys who chase their passion of skiing. It's got a good skiing scenes and an enjoyable storyline. It's about the ski instructor playboy, T.J. Burke and his uglier but but funny best friend, Dexter Rutecki. They ski in the rich and prestigious Aspen, beginning as ski bums before certain events see the movie develop a more concrete storyline. In short, this film will not be to everyone's taste but if you ski and enjoy the mountain life, watch it, you won't be disappointed!

As a skier I know the terrain. I grew up in east and skied about an eighth of the hills around here. That included Tremblant, Mt. Saint-Anne, Killington, Jay Peek and Lake Placid. I moved out west to mountains such as Whistler and Baker. My hero's were Scott Smitt and Glen Plake which I was in awe.

I give this movie a 7 out of 10 because although it has excellent skiing, it isn't enough. As for the story line I wasn't ever expecting it to be anything anyways.

Steve.

Aspen Extreme falls into the rare class of movies that gets worse with every scene. Literally, the first scene of this movie is the best one and it just falls off a cliff from there. Be warned though, that first scene really isn't very good. The dialogue and plot are poor. The acting belongs on the lifetime channel. If this movie is what extreme skiers do, then I'll stick to my day job. This looks to be good material for a 'bad movie' night with the guys, but its bad is boring. Also, how in the world can two skiers from 'hills' in Michigan be pro skiers on terrain they have never skied before arriving to try out to be ski instructors. I'm not an expert skier, but I know the hills here in Arizona are more extreme than those in Michigan.

Aspen Extreme is in the mold of movies like All the Right Moves, Youngblood etc. nothing special but just a fun little movie. Paul Gross and Peter Berg are two guys from Michigan who go to Aspen as ski instructors (??!) and explore their new vista. Berg of Chicago Hope and Gross of Due South make an excellent partnership, I found myself rooting for them from the beginning. Gross is the pretty boy who captivates both the rich teaser and the super cute radio jockey (played by the captively cute Teri Polo). The movie is humorous for much of the first half, but then takes a darker turn, and tends to drag on in the second half as well. The ski scenes are okay but I felt like I was watching a specialty adventure sports channel, in other words it was overkill. Otherwise it's just a late night timewaster which I expected to be boring but instead was fun and a good little movie to watch with a lady friend. 5 out of 10.

*** out of ****:

As a skier, I'm a little prejudiced to see a movie about skiing, with such good skiing action, and as someone who always thought of Aspen as one of the country's more overrated mountains, I'm happy to see it portrayed in such negative light (no one would ever make such a movie about Vail or Sun Valley, for example). Anyway, on to the film:

The film centers around two friends stuck in low-paying manual labor jobs, one of which, TJ, suddenly decides to go out and live the American dream. He wants to leave his blue-collar life behind and using his instincts and boldness, attain entrance into the upper echelons of society, in this case, skiing. Knowing he can't do it without his best friend Dexter, by his side, he convinces him in going along. The two embark in Aspen, and fall upon gorgeous women, a job they love, and fame and prestige. Well, at least one of them does. Dexter, although an able skier, does not get the ski instructor job as his friend does, and the two start to drift off onto two different paths. TJ gets all the breaks, and Dexter doesn't, to the point where it tears apart their friendship. One of the big strengths of the movie, was the authenticity and chemistry with which Berg and Gross display as friends, and the interesting, if not somewhat obvious paths, that the two take.

A couple of ladies make their way, into TJ's life on and off, one of which is played very well by Teri Polo, who's drop-dead gorgeous yet down-to-earth in this film, and who provides for one of the films most uplifting moments, when she arrives at Dexter's place right after he's hit rock bottom, and assertively throws his booze away, forces him into the shower, and to go jogging with her, so that he can regain control of his life, even though she always paid a lot more attention to T.J. The story is not afraid to dig into deep levels of tragedy, yet keep a balance, that makes it uplifting overall.

It's set in 1993, but there's a lot of 80s flavor in this. Along with the synthesizer-dominated score, T.J, is to a lesser extent the kind of Tom Cruise/Mel Gibson/Kurt Russell-like hero, who's just booming with masculinity. He's overconfident, he doesn't back down from a fight (including a fight with a comically villanous ski instructor who feels threatened by other good ski instructors, yeah that happens all the time on the ski slopes), he's strong and resilient, he goes full-force after whatever girls come his way, and he's clearly the good guy. On the whole, it's pretty action-packed and filled with plenty of genuine drama that I really do like it.

If there's one thing I can say about Aspen Extreme, it is that it is not at all the Top Gun of the ski slopes, it's The Great Outdoors of the ski slopes. And by that, of course, I mean it's The Great Outdoors without John Candy or Dan Aykroyd. And by THAT, of course, I mean it's The Great Outdoors, but not funny. Oddly enough, the movie is more a combination of The Great Outdoors and Dumb & Dumber than anything else, but all of the comedy has been removed. In fact, the only thing that the movie takes from Top Gun is the cloying cheesiness and relentless predictability. Not that I didn't enjoy it.

My roommate recommended the movie to me, lending it to me out of his DVD collection so I thought I'd check it out. I wasn't entirely disappointed in the movie because it featured some spectacular skiing scenery, but I enjoyed it for how bad it was just as much as I enjoyed the acting, story, etc.

The story is about two guys living in Detroit and both working dead end jobs, when one of them gets a promotion to another dead end job and decides to just pick up and get out of town. I respect that, there's hardly a better way to make your life interesting when it's become too routine than to completely mix it up in a way that you don't know what it will all lead to. Just pick up and leave, when you think about it, there's no way you're going to become homeless (although you might spend a few nights in your van…).

They start out not knowing anyone in town and end up with one of them sleeping with the richest woman in town (that's Lloyd in bed with Mary Swanson) AND the most frigid, uptight woman in town (remember that cheesy teenage romance in The Great Outdoors? Yeah. That.), while the other ends up getting involved with moving massive amounts of drugs to make a little extra money. By the way, if ever there walked the earth a man who could not keep his cool, he is in this movie. Dexter's paralyzing quickness to freak out is nearly a character in itself.

T.J., the more successful of the two, has vague aspirations to become a writer that come up when the screenplay needs them to, and is torn between sleeping with a good-looking wealthy (and oddly motherly) woman and sleeping with a more regular girl with a job as a radio host who cares more about him but is frigid, grumpy and completely uninteresting because of her total lack of personality beyond her aloofness.

The film is best when it shows breathtaking shots of extreme skiing, but even then tends to trip up when it tries to tie un-matching shots together as it does numerous times in showing skiers going down the hill. There are times when it is amazing that they thought two shots could go together, but I'm willing to accept that for the sake of the story, which unfortunately is not very good. You have the love interest, the conflict to the love interest, the best friend in need, the over-the-top villain (and they do NOT let you forget that this guy is VERY bad), etc.

Overall not a bad movie, but comparisons to other classics like Endless Summer and Top Gun may run the risk of giving false expectations. This is direct to video fare, but in that genre you could certainly do worse.

It's much better than Ski School, for example

I am skier from 17 years and this is my favourite film, because it displays a lot of my dreams. I've seen it above 40 times, and each time at the end I am moved to tears! It's just great!!!

This movie did not have to rely on incredible acting or a fabulous story line to win over it's audience. It was the incredible scenery and skiing. Although I have never been skiing in Aspen, it now makes me want to make that a place I eventually want to hit.

This was a great movie. I've always thought it was. Like a lot of people have mentioned it's a great skier's movie. I'll watch it a couple of times over the summer along with all of the other ski movies that I either have, i.e. Hot Dog, Warren Miller, etc... It makes one want to get up and change jobs and lifestyle and keeps my powder fever under control until winter arrives again.

I don't agree with some users comments on the soundtrack though. I think the songs on the soundtrack fit the movie very well. In fact I wish the soundtrack was available because I like the songs in this movie, especially, 'Start the Car' by Jude Cole, 'The Driver' by Terry Reid, and 'Best inside you' by David Baerwald.

It is a sad movie with a similar plot as Top Gun in some respects, but I think the strong friendship of TJ and Dexter separates this movie from the testosterone driven Top Gun(which I think is also a great movie). Not to mention this is one of the few ski movies of the 80s/90s that was not a comedy.

The movie has problems, and not really like "REAL" Aspen is. I have been to Aspen 25 times. 1st time there was in summer(before the Gondola was installed early 80's) and ended up being Jack Nicholson's Doubles partner for Tennis on red mountain. After that since early 80's I have made many 2 to 5 day trips to ski. along with the other resorts along the way from Denver) Got to ski with "Jack" again with Angelica Huston and Esme Marshal (A friends cover girl model girlfriend). I had some good times; (Met a lot of locals etc. I still don't recognize the OOB skiing they did, but then again I only ski on piste. Watched 24 hours of Aspen couple times live. It's a great town sort of a fairy tale place. Even thought the 2 lead characters acted like assholes and would not get anywhere in real Aspen the way they behaved, it was fun to watch. I have not skied there in 5 years and want to go back. Just seeing the Maroon Bells and all made me feel great. "Next year in Aspen"...............

Actually, I know I'm not because I've got a group of friends who watch this regularly and laugh like crazy. If they had hammed this up, like Hot Dog, it wouldn't have had a prayer but playing this ludicrous story straight up has yielded fabulous results. Franz, played by the lead singer of Spandau Ballet, is one of the greatest comic characters in film history.

There are no "rules" for unintentional comedy but there are a few elements that greatly make them watch able and Aspen Extreme has the lot. First off, good acting helps and the cast here is first rate. Berg, Gross, and Polo all deliver their over-the-top dialog as if it were penned by the Bard and the bit players are solid as well, from Franz to Karl Stoll to the Olympic hopeful from Oregon.

"What's the worst day you've ever had." "I dunno, probably the time we were arrested for stealing those telephone poles."

Secondly, nice cinematography and direction are almost essential. This film looks and feels like big budget Hollywood. It's beautiful.

Next, the soundtrack should be campy and Aspen Extreme's 80's rock track is hilarious. A perfect homage to Del Amitri. In fact, the whole movie is filled with 80s iconography even though it came out well into the 90s, "Hi, I'm Andy Mill…."

Finally, the writing has to be bad—really bad—and directed as if it were genius. The great Alan Dwan once said, in reference to comedic camp, "(sic)You can't tell your actors they're making comedy or they'll ham it up. They must believe they're making a serious film." As the above example suggests, and un-funny line on paper, when derived in the proper context, can be much funnier than if the joke actually had a punch line the made sense.

All I'm sayin' is that this film may not be Road House or Endless Love, but it's a dammed fun time and won't even need robots sitting in the front row you help you out.

"I'm not here for the party, azz hool. Zis iz my job!"

Ok Ok Ok, so that acting is kinda cheesy, and semi-predictable... however, this movie has some great twists. I highly reccomend this film to any true ski fans. If you have ever dreamed about moving outwest and being a ski bum watch this film! I LOVE IT! I have had to restrain myself the last few weeks from getting in my station wagon and moving out west. I do recognize there are many flaws and weaknesses in this film, but hey, just let go and enjoy some awesome skiing, action and scenery!