Chalet Girl

Film Review by Nicola Balkind | 01 Oct 2011
Film title: Chalet Girl
Director: Phil Traill
Starring: Felicity Jones, Tamsin Egerton, Ed Westwick, Bill Nighy
Release date: 3 October 2011
Certificate: 12

With a made-for-TV screenplay thinly veiled as a funky new take on mountaintop athletics, Chalet Girl follows ex-skateboarder Kim, a plain Jane with a big heart and a tiny wage packet. Working to support herself and dad (an out-of-place Bill Bailey), she takes an opportunity to work for a whopping £12.50 per hour as a chalet girl to a monied transatlantic family. You can guess which sport - you do it on a board - takes her fancy, and everything that follows is as slow and predictable as learning to snow plough.

The film's only redeeming features are Bills Bailey and Nighy, but even they seem confused as to what they're doing on screen alongside the biggest caricatures committed to screen since the seven dwarves. Chalet Girl proves that ski lodges are only fun to those who are in them and - as Hot Tub Time Machine demonstrated - their cinematic and popular appeal went out with the 80s.