Hot Dog…The Movie is a teen comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 film released in January 1984

1984 in film

-Events:* The Walt Disney Company founds Touchstone Pictures to release movies with subject matter deemed inappropriate for the Disney name.* Tri-Star Pictures, a joint venture of Columbia Pictures, HBO, and CBS, releases its first film....

. The film went on to gross over $17 million and became one of the iconic teen comedies of the 1980s

1980s

File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...

.

Premise

The film stars Patrick Houser as Harkin Banks, a young and ambitious ski bum from Idaho

Idaho

Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....

 who is determined to prove himself in a freestyle skiing

Freestyle skiing

Freestyle skiing is form of skiing which used to encompass two disciplines: aerials, and moguls. Except the two disciplines mentioned earlier Freestyle Skiing now consists of Skicross, Half Pipe and Slope Style...

 competition at Squaw Valley

Squaw Valley Ski Resort

Squaw Valley Ski Resort in Olympic Valley, California, is one of the largest ski areas in the United States, and was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. It is the second-largest ski area at Lake Tahoe , with 33 chairlifts, and has the only funitel lift in the U.S...

. Along the way he teams with a pack of fun-loving incorrigibles (whose leader, Dan O'Callahan is played by David Naughton

David Naughton (actor)

David Walsh Naughton is an American actor and singer best known for his starring roles in the 1981 horror film An American Werewolf in London, the 1980 Walt Disney comedy, Midnight Madness, the 1984 comedies Hot Dog.....

), picks up an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n arch-nemesis named Rudi (John Patrick Reger), and enters a love triangle

Love triangle

A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it usually implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two...

 with a pair of blondes, a young woman named Sunny (Tracy N. Smith) and the more mature Sylvia Fonda (played by Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed

Shannon Tweed

Shannon Lee Tweed is a Canadian actress and model. One of the most successful actresses of mainstream erotica, she is identified with the genre of the erotic thriller...

 in one of her first major film roles).

Reception

Janet Maslin

Janet Maslin

Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...

, writing in the New York Times, gave a generally positive review, describing the film as "light and less moronic than it might have been."