Movie Review: 'Weak Layers' is a Throwback to Ski Bum Movies Past

Weak Layers (2024)

Directed by Katie Burrell

Written by Katie Burrell, Andrew Ladd

Starring Katie Burrell, Jadyn Wong, Chelsea Conwright, Evan Jonigkeit

Release Day January 5th, 2024

Published January 5th, 2025

Weak Layers is a throwback to a time in the 1980s and 90s when comedies set on ski slopes became a mildly popular sub-genre. These movies all had the same formula, a group of slobs battling a group of snobs. The slobs throw wild, over the top parties filled with drugs, booze, nudity, and associated debauchery, before having to learn a valuable lesson that leads to them to clean up their act just long enough to win, or come close to winning, a big skiing competition. The only notable differences in these comedies was whether or not they featured just skiing or skiing and snowboarding.

It's been a few years since we've seen one of these skiing comedies like Ski School, Aspen Extreme, Out Cold, or Snowboard Academy. As terrible as these movies often were, there was a particular charm to them. Skiing comedies, like the similar sub-genre of Summer Camp movies, think Meatballs, have a breezy, silly, dopey quality that made them easy to watch. Weak Layers recapture the silly, stupid, easy to watch qualities of the classic ski-comedy.

Weak Layers was co-written and directed by Katie Burrell who also stars in the movie as Cleo, a wannabe film director, killing time by drinking, partying and skiing. Cleo shares an apartment with her two closest friends, Lucy (Jadyn Wong), and former Olympic skier, Tina (Chelsea Conwright). When the trio parties just a little too hard and end up trashing their apartment, they're kicked out and forced to live in a friends van while they seek a new place to live and party.

The trios best bet for getting the money together for a place to live is a longshot. Cleo's video of her friends partying and skiing has recently gone viral and earned her the chance to submit a short documentary to a contest with a $10,000 grand prize. To win, she and her friends will have to clean up their acts and do some of the best skiing of their lives while Cleo captures it all on camera and turns it into an award winning skiing movie.

This doesn't go well. Lucy and Tina refuse to stop drinking and chasing strange men. Cleo is also distracted as she falls into a flirtatious rivalry with a skiing legend named Gabe Paul (Evan Jonigkeit). Gabe just wants to enjoy skiing again, he's grown weary and jaded and has a tragic backstory and he's inspired by Cleo and her friends, and their love of skiing. The romance has the extremely predictable obstacle that Gabe is part of an opposing team in this skiing/documentary contest but it's not hard to imagine how they will work around that.

Weak Layers is not surprising or unpredictable. What sets it apart is Katie Burrell who is a charming star. She and her friends are funny whether they are partying themselves to near death or shredding through the snow on skis, snowboards, or snowmobiles. What makes it work so well is a tone that establishes that nothing important is going to happen, no one will be in any danger, and all will work out in the end. It's predictable but in a charming and reassuring fashion.

If you have nostalgia for the silly comedies of the 1980s or when skiing comedies somehow thrived, you will enjoy Weak Layers. It's breezy, funny, silly and superfluous in the best ways. It's a brain free exercise in nostalgia for a time when people used the term 'party animal' without a hint of irony. Katie Burrell and her fellow ski bums are having a great time and you'll have fun watching them.

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