Review of Fire, Ice and Dynamite (1990) by Adam F — 14 Apr 2014

"Fire, Ice and Dynamite" is a bizarre film. When you hear a description of the plot, it sounds like a real-life cartoon: It's about a well meaning millionaire who cares about the environment and fakes his own death so he doesn't have to pay back his debts and sets up an extreme race in order to give all of his money to his children.

Are you intrigued yet? What if you heard that this movie has a guy parachuting on a bicycle, a guy skiing on skis that create their own snow, snowboarders going through loopty-loops, a bathtub with a parachute getting blown out of a house, an extended scene where a car falls upside down on the roof of another car, only to keep racing and more! How about now? Eager to see this movie? Well unfortunately, the movie is so inept at making any of the characters compelling, making the races interesting or making it feel like there are any stakes in the competitions that it falls completely flat.

Somehow, the movie is BORING and the only good things about it are the stunts (when the editing doesn't butcher them) and the fact that once you have seen it, you can describe it to people and tell them how insane it was.

If you can manage to get a VHS or Dvd of this movie, the best way to enjoy it is to play it on your big TV during a party. Guests will only get brief glimpses of what's going on and the sheer insanity of it all will be incredibly entertaining.

When it start getting slow again during the scenes of "character development" everyone can go back to eating pizza and talking to the other people present. Entertainment wise it ranges a lot from absolutely brillant to dull and if you're sitting down and watching it, it's entertaining to a point but also pretty bad.

(VHS, June 29, 2012).