You'll laugh yourself seriously!

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2007)

Will Ferrell can do almost anything and here is play a sex addicted (heterosexual) American men's single figure skater, Chaz Michael Michales. His main competition is played by John Heder from Napoleon Dynamite as James McElroy who is adopted by a rich billionaire who takes talented orphans and makes them superstars. He's played by the great character actor, William Fichtner ( I remember him from As the World Turns). Heder can actually hold his own playing this gifted, sexually naive, effeminate skater. Both skaters get booted from men's single competition after a fight. So after three and half years of doing ice shows and working at a sports store, McElroy's longtime coach played by Craig T. Nelson reunites them to do pairs skating. Unfortunately, the top American pairs skating is played by the funny Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live and her real-life husband Will Arnett as Fairchild and Stranz Von Wallenburg. They are like Kitty and Peter Carruthers of their time, another brother-sister team from the United States. The Office's Jenna Fischer plays Kate Von Wallenburg, the younger sister and assistant to her siblings' obsessive quest for the gold. In the meantime, Kate and Jimmy fall for each other but Kate's sister Fairchild has other plans for her sister. The Von Wallenberg siblings are always blaming Kate for their parents death in a car accident as they were driving her to ice skating practice. Of course, there are cameos by Olympic Gold Medalists, Peggy Fleming, Scott Hamilton who plays a commentator and Britan Boitano, and Olympic Silver & Bronze medalist Nancy Kerrigan at the National Skaters ASsociation. Of course, the writers have worked around not setting it around the United States Figure Skating Association and their Olympics is the Wintersports in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It's a funny movie despite some flaws. If only ice skating was about art instead of about how many triple jumps that a person can do in four minutes. Most of the music, costumes, and actions in the figure skating world shown here wouldn't pass the world skating league.