Snowbound: The Jim and Jennifer Stolpa Story (1994)

What makes it different from others?

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I remember watching at least some of the movie, but I was so astounded by how stupid and unthoughtful the parents were, I had to shut it off. No movie, for TV or theater, should have been made about adults who put their children in harm's way due to restricted intelligence. For shame, Jim and Jennifer. For shame. In fact, during the year this movie was released, I held a Stolpa party and one of my good friends came dressed as Jennifer. She had on ragged clothes and used a suit bag in which she put one of her daughter's dolls with a diaper smeared with chunky Skippy peanut butter mixed with frozen peas. She won the award for Most Stupid. Just my thoughts and remembrances.

warning some parts of this review have spoiler material if you actually want to watch this movie before reading reviews don't read this until you have seen the movie.let me start off by saying that Jim must have not been very smart when it came to driving.Because all he ever did was keep getting both of them into a hole. The movie was way to predictable and the music sucked because every time they were in trouble it just seemed like they would play a really nice song. The reason why i say this movie was predictable is probably because the real Jim and Jennifer Stolpa should have predicted what would happen if you just drove into 2 feet deep snow,you'll get stuck. the actors were not extremely bad because they really got the stupidity down but they didn't even look like they really did when they show the real Jim and Jennifer Stolpa. But anyway it was a okay story to make a movie but i think it would be better if they made their own story that would be like the Jim and Jennifer Stolpa story but they shouldn't have used Jim and Jennifer Stolpas real story.

I love survival stories!!! I forgot about this above average TV movie for a long time and then it was on Lifetime the other day and I still really enjoy this one!!! A young California couple, Jim and Jennifer Stolpa, played by Neil Patrick Harris and Kelli Williams attempt to pay their respects to a grandmother who passed away in Idaho. They try to go up I 80 (the same route the famous Donner Party traveled!!!) but the highway is closed because of heavy snow. Their reluctance to wait (they want so badly to get to the funeral and lend moral support to Jim's mother)is a potentially fatal decision. They drive up to Redding and take highway 299 east to Cedarville and into desolate Northern Nevada. They find out too late that the snow is worse up there and they end up getting trapped in the snow miles from any civilization. Scary!!! To make matters worse they have a 5 month old infant and they both feel terrible for getting him into a deadly situation. They try to wait it out in their pickup, but when not one other car drives down the road they're on, they make another desperate decision: to walk 20 miles east to a highway they saw on their map. If they can just reach that highway, they can get help.They take a wrong turn on a forked road and end up worse off than ever, and the cold is killing them and the baby. Kelli Williams was awesome when she was crying over Jim having to leave her and the baby behind in the cave!!! It just broke my heart!!! Neil Patrick Harris was great too. His character Jim had to walk some 20 miles back to the truck and then another 50 to Cedarville!!! When it's do or die, human beings are capable of incredible things!!! Like I said, I love survival movies and books, especially when the characters face harsh weather and LONG WALKS!!! FOLLOW THE RIVER and LEAVE NO TRACE are among some of my favorite stories, so SNOWBOUND is right up my alley!!! For a TV movie, it's very well done and I could watch it for many years to come!!!

All the saccharine, lovey-dovey stuff at the start almost made me turn this movie off, but now I see that the screenwriter was just trying to show us the strong bonds that helped three people survive an unbelievable ordeal. Things started moving quickly as the father, taking his young family to join the rest of the clan, ignored weather reports and drove through a blizzard. The snow got worse and worse and finally they were stranded in the middle of nowhere. Their struggles to stay alive kept me awake when a lot of movies would have left me sleeping at the hour when this film was broadcast. I kept saying to myself "No one could survive this long in the bitter cold." Adding to the tension were the decisions: do they stay in the SUV, which offered shelter, but where they will eventually freeze, or do all three brave the elements and face a much surer and sooner extinction, with only the slim chance of finding help? Once they've made that fateful choice, which way do they walk and what if they pick the wrong way? Does father leave wife and baby to freeze in a cave while he's asked to walk 50 miles with frost-bitten feet to get help? Seven days in the cold seems too much for anyone, much less a baby, but somehow all 3 survived it. I wouldn't have believed any of it had I not known it was all true. Good acting, especially from Kelli Williams of TV's "The Practice" series. I can recommend this movie.