Copper Mountain (1983)

Long before Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), The Mask (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), Batman Forever (1995), The Cable Guy (1996), Liar Liar (1997), and The Truman Show (1998) came a little known movie called Copper Mountain which was released in 1983. It's interesting to note that this movie only resurfaced following Jim Carrey's meteoric rise to fame following the box office success of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in 1994. Jim Carrey was box office gold and audiences came in droves to check out his own brand of rubber faced, energetic slapstick comedy.Copper Mountain was one of Jim Carrey's early movies which showcased his own brand of comedy that audiences came to love. Unfortunately, Copper Mountain is one of the worst movies ever. To describe it as terrible is not doing it any justice. The humour is lame, the entire movie is of poor quality, and the entire plot is pure nonsense. The finished product resembled a home movie done on the cheap.The movie was so unbearable, I couldn't even finish the movie. In fact, when we hired this out on video at the time, we stopped this movie to re-watch Titanic instead.Any copies of Copper Mountain on video and DVD are as scarce as hen's teeth, and you may have better luck finding it on YouTube. Whether you are a Jim Carrey fan or not, avoid this movie at all costs. It's painfully atrocious. It's probably for the best if this movie disappears from our existence and becomes extinct.1/10.

Jim Carrey doing average-to-poor impersonations and Ronnie Hawkins performing entire songs on stage just to stretch this incompetent travesty of a "movie" to a sixty minute running time. They should have just done it as a video sketch and left it at that. There is only enough plot here for about three minutes of predictable screen time. What is the point of this movie? Why does the band let some guy walk up on stage and impersonate Sammy Davis Jr for five whole minutes, and provide him with back-up music? Why is Ronnie Hawkins performing for nobody? What was Alan Thicke thinking when he agreed to do this? Obviously they didn't pay him much since the entire budget of this film was obviously about three hundred dollars. At least Jim Carrey has the excuse of this being his first film so he didn't need to care how stupid it made him look...... at least not at the time. I'm sure he regrets it now though. One out of ten.

No matter how crap you think this film is - it launched Copper Mountain into a world renowned ski resort. Before this flick it was a single village family crap-hole. Now it's a 3 going on four village resort that gives Aspen, Vail, & Breckenridge fierce competition. If you go to Copper it's fun to watch this movie afterwards to see the changes. Make sure you check out nearby Leadville truly one of the best kept secrets in America. You can see Leadville on the sign at the end of the opening credits. Go to the Silver Dollar Saloon & Quincy's. Doc Holliday hung out in Leadville & it hasn't changed much since.Nonetheless this is a piece of history. The ski industry has changed so much - it went from cheesy to prestigious. This film happeneed right before the industry boomed.

In short, avoid this like the plague unless you're a glutton for pain and misery. This is the one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I've seen "Manos: The Hands of Fate." It's the antithesis of good cinema. You know it's a dud when you see the film crew in the reflections of the actors' sunglasses and hear two different songs clashing simultaneously over a skiing montage for several minutes.You might enjoy it if you like hicks with huge aviators singing lousy renditions of classic songs or stock video footage of amateur skiers slogging down the slopes. Jim Carrey's character is a clumsy oaf who does impulse celebrity impressions, one of which was a pretty good Steve Martin, the rest of which were pathetically unfunny and instantly forgettable, like the entire film.Skip this one.