Blazing Blades!

Rating: 6/10 (1 February 2009)

Strangely, professional ice skating is yet unmarked comedic territory -- or at least I can't think of another comedy that deals with it -- which Blades Of Glory boldly enters. Hollywood's top gauche actors, Will Ferrell (that burly one with the overly closely set eyes) and Napoleon Dynamite's Jon Heder (should consider closing his mouth once in a while and losing that perm) team up to reach for gold. For about one hour it's pretty solid, if predictable, comedy: Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) are top figure skating champions who lose their license for duking it out on the podium. After a while in the doldrums, they discover a legal loophole and storm back onto the ice as the world's first all-male pair skating team, only to face the world's most pernicious Teutonic siblings on skates ...
Amazingly, both Ferrell and Heder learned to skate well enough to blend in seamlessly with the SFX, which makes the figures look surprisingly authentic (no mean feat, and of the directors remarked quite believably that this movie was like a Waterworld on ice). It's mostly cheap but effective jibes against the colourful world of ice skating, where primadonnas perform amazing feats in glittery spandex (and that's just the men) -- and the references to Tonya Harding, Brian Boitano and Elvis Stojko come thick and fast. The movie is at its best when it just lets Will Ferrell rip -- such as in the Sex Addicts Anonymous scene. Will Ferrell might not be the comedian to impress your in-laws with, but he is like the Boris Spassky of silly fun. The movie runs out of steam and gags towards the end and can't escape predictability, but, hey, it's still good entertainment on a slow evening.