YMMV / Cool Runnings

• Awesome Music: By none other than Hans Zimmer.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Sanka turning up at the door of the hotel room wearing a maid's hat and brandishing a feather duster.
  Yul: Whatever's wrong with you... is no little thing.
• Cliché Storm: The film is considered the quintessential "inspiring sports movie", containing all the trappings of the genre long after they were established, from the team of loveable misfit underdogs, the world-weary but inspiring coach ready to lead them to the Big Game, the stereotypical rival faction of bullies, to even the celebratory Slow Clap. It's still widely seen as a charming and beloved example of such, in large part due to playing the tropes with such sincerity and cheesy, feelgood wholesomeness.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: This film is considered an all-time family classic in Japan. It's also popular in Brazil, where it aired many times in weekday afternoons.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The scene where Derice and Sanka surprise Irv Blitzer, leaving Blitzer clutching his chest in exasperation. Doesn't seem funny anymore, knowing that John Candy (who played Blitzer) died from a heart attack just five months after the film's release. This would've been especially painful for any family renting the newly-released movie on home video, as typical release schedules of the time would place the video release date right around the time of Candy's unexpected death.
• He Really Can Act: Despite the Fake Nationality of his character, Leon Robinson proves he can play a harmless, but aspiring lead character rather than just a Scary Black Man thug he had played in action movies Band of the Hand and Cliffhanger.
• Older Than They Think: Several tropical countries, not just Jamaica, competed in bobsled in 1988, where they created an informal "Caribbean Cup". Mexico competed in bobsled in 1928, the second Winter Olympics, so the phenomenon is Older Than Television.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The film carries some surprisingly powerful moments for what is, by and large, a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits comedy, but none more devastating than the final race, where the old bobsled finally breaks halfway through, turns them upside-down in a heap, and ruins their big moment. The crew getting up and slowly carrying their sled to the finish line (with everyone present applauding them) turns this into a Heartwarming Moment.
  • When Derice and Sanka meet Irv, he's a broken-down, morbidly obese middle-aged man haunted by his past mistake. He's gone so far as to take refuge in a tropical country where no one follows winter sports, just so he doesn't have to face the scorn of those who know what he did. When Derice points out he has a Winter Olympics poster on his wall (suggesting he hasn't entirely left it behind), Irv immediately takes it down and tears it up, even though it meant enough for him to keep it all these years. He can't believe there can ever be redemption for him, and he just wants to be left alone to drown in his self-loathing.
  • Sanka crushing Yul's dreams of living in a big mansion by laughing at him and telling him he isn't special and is just going to be another "dock-working nobody" and that his "dream mansion" is actually Buckingham Palace. Yul's face upon realizing that he will never have the chance is heartbreaking. Of course is does lead to a Heartwarming reconciliation with Junior just after.

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