Extreme Sports and Romantic-Comedy Combines

  Billed as 'this year's Bridget Jones', Chalet Girl brings a wealth of British talent, young and old, to the cinema this March.  Not my kind of film (I went with the fiancee), it's quite an enjoyable film as long as you don't expect a Speilberg epic or a Nolan thriller!

  It's lead actress Felicity Jones' big step up into the cinema as she plays and ex-up-and-coming skateboarder who is scrounging to keep her and her widowed father afloat.  This leads her to take a well paid job as a chalet girl, sending her money back to her Dad, and, of course, she gets into snowboarding and meets new friends and a love interest.

  There's something in this actress as she plays an independent, working class girl from London trying to fit into the upper-class society that comes with working in such places and the scene where she opens up about the death of her mother atop of a mountain, showered in an Alpine sunrise, is particularly moving.

  The addition of two great British actor/comedians in Bills Nighy and Bailey sets the tone for the comedy, and the other actors, mostly big American TV series actors, duly oblige to make a humorous film which is both silly and serious at the right times.  Add the extreme sport action and you have a film that has potential to appeal to a wide variety of cinema goers.

  Chalet Girl can be predictable at times but you wouldn't expect a lot more from a rom-com, would you?  In the end, this is a film primarily about the trials and tribulations of a small family which is a nice way to spend an hour and a half.  Add in comedy, some nice scenery and snowboarding action and you get a half decent film.