Brilliant premise... good farce

Rating: 6/10 (5 April 2007)

Because men don't know how to bond anymore...
You know it's a funny world when the movie with the strongest message for its audience disguises that message so brilliantly, its stupid.
Blades of Glory, the story of two male rivals who become two pair skaters, is not that funny, the film is ludicrously generic, the script weak, the laughs thin (but they are there) BUT it works well as what it is: farce. Ice Skating is, obviously, a bizarre enough sport already and yes there is enough Lycra body suits to make you feel queasy -so the script goes for a healthy dose of testosterone in Ferrell's performance. I felt Ferrell performance was heading towards nonchalant and lacked the spot-on timing that made Talladega shine. Jon Heder is more on point but his character lacks a little.
Jon Heder's Jimmy MacElroy is the artistic, shy teenager type, and so, of course, falls for the younger sister of the pairs' arch-rivals the bizarrely close sibling team that are the Van Waldenbergs - a sweet and fine role by The Office's Jenna Fischer, who I predict is a future star and will turn better and better - and Will Ferrell the sex-addict macho man who learns that he doesn't walk alone.
My major criticism is the utter predictablitility of the plot: it feels like going out to buy new trainers, getting home , opening the box, and discovering your old trainers are in there. Guys, please don't just keep on repeating a winning formula - hero falls, journeys, retrains, discovers values, wins - over and over again: the hero plot needs some serious workover if this is the best that it can do...
BUT it works for this simple reason: it does what the Western did in the 50s, or buddy movies did in the 70s, or hero and sidekick movies did: it shouts men who can be themselves and be mean "without the gayness" as Will Ferrell's Chazz MIchael Michaels would no doubt state. In a world where men are not allowed to be men (And ice skating must be the pinnacle of all such worlds) Blades of Glory is pretty much a great movie about how men can do what women do naturally - like each other - and still be men, and remain straight, cos straight men can bond too.
All this subtext is disguised on a morass of stupid, and mainly, sorry, lame humor - but if you're in the right mood it works: the achievement is that the two keep it all silly enough - and it requires no brain cells to sit back and watch - it just fails to really elevate the film to a better level by never quite capturing it title - the sport aspects of skating are not as thrilling as Nascar - these blades of glory are simply not sharp enough for greatness...