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 were all 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, 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 very easy to watch. Weak Layers does well in recapturing 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 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 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.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
