Cloud 9

Teenagers, social differences, a competition, romance, few real seductive scenes and the expected end. A Disney film with all the familiar ingredients. And, sure, with young actors giving a not realistic but nice portrait of a special age. So, simplistic but far to be boring. Or bad.

Typical Disney movie trying to bank and promote an upcoming child star. As with all Disney stuff this is meant for the rich people out there. You have the nice clothes and settings. The movie was alright for what is it and again being a Disney movie after all. I have to say the production value appears to be above average though.

I didn't even get through the movie as every scene with Dove shows off her bright red and puffy lips. Now I find some people like this and I guess it is done to sexualize her but did we have to make it so big? If you google her and look at the photos she doesn't have the puffy lips. The problem with this is, of course, whenever she talks it appears unnatural. To me, it is gross. The close up gives me shivers. Reminds me of that one girl in the Transformers movie that had such a bad pair of puffy lips I cringed everything she was on screen.

Meet Kayla, an accomplished snowboarder who was kicked out of her team and forced to train with Will, a former champion snowboarder who is working as a coach after a video of him became a hit on the internet and ended his career.

If all preppy had parents like that, however, the payboys badboys usually have parents like Nick's, extremely permissive, arrogant, biased and ambitious (reminded me of the Nelsinho Piquet accident fraud)... good heart that redeems itself, the former injured athlete who overcomes himself, leads a team and trusts in his talent, and in the end everyone learns a beautiful lesson in respect, forgiveness and perseverance...

Cloud 9 is one of those forgotten movies. It had potential but fell flat. It's missing some key elements that make me fall in love with Disney movies. The acting was pretty good and story was interesting. I thought the snowboarding would be boring but it wasn't. And I enjoyed the chemistry between Dove Cameron and Luke Benward. They had a great kiss scene. The only thing I didn't like was how they barely showed Luke's character snowboard. He went through a traumatic thing and they just glossed over it. Also, I liked the main song until it got to the chorus, and now it's still stuck in my head.

From a purely logical stand point this was not a good movie. Script was cheesy and predictable, there were lots of cliches, poor acting, and things that just didn't make sense or we're not realistic.

That being said, from an emotional standpoint, I can't help but really enjoy this movie. Yes, it's clichéd but sometimes that's enjoyable, and the premise was fun. I think Luke Benward actually did a fantastic job, he was the only one who seemed natural and like he wasn't reading from a script (I don't hold Dove Cameron accountable for the bad performance, I'm sure she was directed to act so over the top). And there were just enough scenes with actual heart that I could get past the scenes that made me want to roll my eyes. At the end of the day, it's a Disney Channel movie, so you can just have fun with it!