Review: Ferrell, Heder make great team in ‘Blades of Glory’

Directed by: Josh Gordon, Will Speck

Starring: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer, William Fichtner, Craig T. Nelson

Rated: PG-13

Sports have been fertile fodder for movie plots since nearly the beginning of Hollywood.

Dozens of films, many great ones (“Raging Bull,” “Bull Durham,” “Million Dollar Baby”) and some not so great, have been set in an athletic milieu. Football, baseball, boxing, female boxing and even marching bands have all been the subject of motion pictures.

But figure skating? Surely no one would bother watching, much less making, a film about figure skating.

Surprise, the new effort from the directing team of Josh Gordon and Will Speck, “Blades of Glory,” isn’t even the first movie using skating as a theme. “The Cutting Edge” came along in 1992 and was followed last year by “The Cutting Edge 2: Going for the Gold.” It ended up going straight to the home video market.

“The Cutting Edge” was a light drama heavy on romantic themes while “Blades of Glory” is a broad comedy that rarely rises above obvious sight gags and obligatory borderline “naughty” dialog. The broad comedy approach should come as no surprise since the directors, who hail from the advertising industry, are responsible for the Geico “cavemen” TV commercials. (The cavemen, by the way, are reportedly getting their own television series.)

The biggest weapon in the directors’ arsenal for this movie is Will Ferrell, whose “Talladega Nights” was essentially a better version of “Blades of Glory,” set in the increasingly popular world of NASCAR. That film made ticket sales sense. Ferrell has a basketball comedy in the works as well; Hollywood loves a formula.

Ferrell has been surefire box office gold lately, and his “Blades” co-star, Jon Heder, will forever be remembered as Napoleon Dynamite.

Here, Heder plays Jimmy MacElroy, a seemingly gay figure skater who has no idea the rest of the world thinks he is gay. A billionaire adopted Jimmy when he was a child and raised him for one purpose: world championship figure skating.

His archrival on the ice is Chazz Michael Michaels. Will Ferrell plays the character in the uber-macho style he brought to the screen as Ron Burgundy in “Anchorman” and Ricky Bobby in “Talladega Nights.”

After a nasty incident at the World Figure Skating Championships, both Jimmy and Chazz are barred from the sport for life.

Chazz, who spends time picking up women at Sexaholics Anonymous meetings, gets a gig skating inside a giant cartoon character costume at a children’s ice revue. He’s usually quite drunk and for some reason, that gag seemed to work OK. The directors didn’t let it go on too long like many of the other bits. That’s the problem with many films starring “Saturday Night Live” alumni – the plots may be OK for a 10-minute TV sketch but not a full-length feature.

The prissy Jimmy, now disowned by his adopted father, is working in a skate shop. He does manage a female love interest along the way, dispelling any notion of the gay subtext.

A coach, played by Craig T. Nelson, finds a loophole in the skating bylaws. While Chazz and Jimmy are banned from singles skating, they technically can compete in doubles. Granted, doubles teams are usually comprised of a male and female, but rules are rules.

It takes the coach some doing but Chazz and Jimmy, the two polar opposite and bitter rivals, realize the scheme is the only way back to their former glory days.

A computer program could have been used to generate the story that ensues.

There’s a lot of toned down gross-out humor and a particularly distasteful bit involving a rival skating team doing their routine as JFK and Marilyn Monroe. Also, there are brief cameos from real-life skate stars.

Critics are somewhat mixed, but with Ferrell and Heder on board, “Blades of Glory” will sell a lot of tickets and then gain new life when the DVD is released.

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician. He can be reached at info@wunderlesound.com.