Having taken on Christmas and NASCAR, Will Ferrell takes the next logical step with a typically loopy take on the seamy underbelly of competitive figure skating. The only obstacle he had in his way was making a farce that would be the equal of the doings in the real world of competitive skating. Tonya Harding, whatever else you might think about her, is a hard act to beat. Yet, ably assisted by Jon Heder of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE fame, both he and the film, BLADES OF GLORY, do just that.
Ferrel is Chazz Michael Michaels, the baddest boy on ice with his leather chaps and soft-core dance moves that drive the audience wild. The only thing that keeps him down is Jimmy MacElroy, the wunderkind adopted out of an orphanage by a billionaire who grew tired of racing horses and wanted to switch to human athletes. Bold in peacock feathers and an equally feathery blonde hairdo, Jimmy may not be sex on ice, but he has his own fan base, albeit quieter and in more of a stalker vein. The rivalry drives them as competitors as much as it drives the media who can’t get enough of their trash-talking. It all pays off, after a fashion, when they tie at a crucial competition. As they take the podium together to accept their medals, fisticuffs ensue, mascots are set ablaze, and they are both banned for life from competitive skating. Three-and-a-half years later, Chazz is skating the part of an evil wizard in a low-budget ice show while canoodling with the wood nymphs from said show between performances. Jimmy, have been un-adopted by the disappointed billionaire, is selling skates to unlikely kid athletes. A confrontation with his stalker, Hector (Nick Swarsdon), changes everything, though. Embarrassed to be stalking a has-been, Hector has combed the rulebook and come up with a loophole. Jimmy is banned from singles competition, but not pairs. Naturally, he assumes Jimmy will be skating with a girl, but events conspire so that he and Chazz are thrown together to make peace with each other and history on the ice.
Ferrell and Heder make for an oddball couple with peculiar chemistry. Ferrell’s garrulous bulk a perfect foil to Heder’s slight build and decidedly feminine looks. This is essentially a one-joke film, but between the two of them, they keep that joke buoyant by finding every possible variation on the hate-hate relationship between Chazz and Jimmy played out at the level of petulant six-year-olds. When they start to warm up to each other, they maintain that same level, keeping things determinedly silly with their stunted emotional growth playing happy sidekick to their equally stunted intellectual development. Yet, and this is why it all works, there is a fascinating albeit tortured, logic to their worldview. It’s not that they haven’t given any thought to things other than skating, it’s just that they’ve been too focused to actually make sense of anything else.
Good as those two are, they have a supporting case that can hold its own, starting with Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as the brother-sister rivals in pairs skating. Archly vapid with a side of zesty melodrama, they are the blonde Bobsey Twins of pure evil given to questionable skating material while dolled up in sequins both on and off the ice. Jenna Fischer is their ignored sister, who is as sweet and innocent as her siblings are not. She inadvertently gets swept into the intrigue when she finds a goofy kind of romance with Jimmy that may or may not survive her siblings’ machinations and the would-be lovers complete lack of kissing proficiency. Rounding out the nonsense is Craig T. Nelson as the brooding skating coach willing to risk it all, though not his all it should be noted, for a shot at perfecting an impossible skating move that will either catapult Chazz and Jimmy back into skating stardom or right into the emergency room.
While everything else is fair game in this film, the skating, oddly enough, is taken very seriously. The actors do an impressive amount of gliding on their own, and the choreography actually makes a case for guy-guy pairs skating with routines that are not just manly, but action-packed as Chazz and Jimmy square off between bouts of graceful dance moves.
BLADES OF GLORY is a gloriously silly piece of work. From Ferrell’s complete conviction in Chazz’s sense of ubermasculinity, to a slow-speed chase on skates, but NOT on ice, the absurdity factor is never less than at a fever pitch. Smart it’s not, but fun, you bet.
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