Olympic Dreams | SXSW 2019 Film Review

Olympic Dreams attempts to give an inside look at the rebound of an athlete after losing competition and the intimate bonds created there.

Using a real-life Olympic runner to mold the story, Alexi Pappas takes us into the mind of an athlete as she transforms into cross-country Olympian skier, Penelope. She experiences the ultimate defeat, as she loses her competition, and has limited time left. Lucky for her, she meets an enchanted dentist in Ezra (Nick Kroll), who’s about twice her age.

A very interesting filmmaking method, as Olympic Dreams was actually filmed on location during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics and consisted of a cast and crew totaling three. The others featured in the film are real athletes who elected to partake as additional cast. While a very bold way to capture movie magic, the technique almost appeared to be more documentary-style with narrative intentions.

Unfortunately, this dynamic just doesn’t work. As a long time fan of Nick Kroll’s, I know he’s talented and funny, but this just didn’t seem like a suitable fit for him. Pappas does a nice job bringing us into the Olympic world, but the connection between the two feels so synthetic. It’s regrettable that this romance is not brought to life the way it was anticipated, as some attribution is delegated to writing and directing for not giving us a substantial enough screenplay to believe them as a couple. While not all fault lies at the hands of the screenplay, one thing that’s objectively clear is that Kroll and Pappas don’t have the appropriate on-screen chemistry to fulfill the vision of director Jeremy Teicher.

The most bothersome piece of this film is that a platform was created to discuss the societal taboo of gender gap relationships, and yet nothing more than a couple subtle jokes and a mere mention of their age difference was done with it. Teicher could have made it about the upheaval battle from societal expectations and how the couple overcame it, but the mention of it and less than a handful of jokes seems to be a disservice to the available commentary.

If there was no intention to make this a matter of the relationship and have a discussion on it, presumably there wouldn’t have been a mention of it. It’s possible this was a slight oversight, maybe it was intentional, but it’s one that truly takes its toll on Olympic Dreams as a whole.

Olympic Dreams succeeds in using first-time, unique filmmaking methods, but falls short on story, humor, and romantic believability.