I’ll tell you, I was more than a bit reluctant to see Blades of Glory. It’s a very personal matter really, but I think it’s easily understood and appreciated by just about anyone who’s ever loved a sport. As someone who’s figure skated herself for over a decade, someone who is still at least a decently educated fan of the sport, I’ve been left less-than-impressed with the crap-fest that Hollywood has made out of my beloved pastime. I believe Ice Castles, the 1978 flick in which a former ice champion forges further victory even after she is blinded in a freak accident, was the first shot the big screen took at the triple axel. Then there’s the Paul Glaser movie, The Cutting Edge, the 1992 romantic comedy about a frigid figure skater who pairs up with a retired hockey player to win gold. Yeah right. Most recently, there’s been Ice Princess, staring Michelle Trachtenberg, whose character Casey Carlyle transforms herself from Harvard bound high school misfit to figure skating prodigy under the guidance of her coach played by Kim Cattrall.
I refuse to see this movie.
The problem here is that each of these dramatic, grand scale productions takes itself seriously, and let’s face it, between the knee bashing, the eccentric costume wearing, the flamboyant hairdo sporting, the sexual ambiguity, the DUI arrests, and the double gold medal awarding, figure skating’s got enough theatrics without adding Hollywood to the melodramatic mix. Enter, Blades of Glory, a deliberate crack at a sport notorious for making way too big of a fuss for itself, and you’ve got yourself a figure skating movie that lands on its feet.
This is a Will Ferrell movie; of course the plot skates on thin ice. But it works: Ferrell’s character, Chazz Michael Michaels, is an over weight, alcohol-dependant, sex addict figure skater who is stripped of his title and banned from men’s singles after a public fight with Jimmy MacElroy (John Heder), Michaels’ rival, who’d been hand selected by his adoptive parents for his natural skating ability. After the two live separately as figure skating burnouts for a couple of years, MacElroy and his “Coach” (Craig T. Nelson) discover he is indeed still eligible to compete in the pairs division. Eventually, the two convince Michaels to pull himself out of retirement to compete with MacElroy in the first male-male pairs team.
Just because they are no longer competing against each other doesn’t mean the two don’t have rivals. Real life husband and wife duo Amy Poehler and Will Arnett play Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg, a semi-incestuous brother and sister pair that will resort to any and all foul play to assure their victory. And the plot is further thickened by their sister Katie (Jenna Fischer) who falls in love with MacElroy. He surprises the audience in his heterosexual return of the affection.
Will Ferrell certainly has the overweight athlete role down pat. All he usually has to do is take his shirt off and jump around and he usually has his audience right there with him. The real delight in this film was John Heder, who flawlessly parodied the type of figure skating celebrity typified by Johnny Weir, whose flowing locks, D list celebrity ambition, sexually ambiguity, and knack for attaching and talking to animals on his heavily sequined costumes leaves fans wondering how he could possibly be for real. Whether or not he is in real life, Heder creates him true to form on screen, a feat I’d have thought next to impossible for an actor so heavily defined by his role as Napoleon Dynamite.
I’m coming from a certain vantage point in reviewing this film, but I think it’s a perspective that has a definite tendency toward the critical side. That said, I quite liked the flick, and if I can enjoy a figure skating movie, so can just about anyone else.
Liz Licorish
Comments Directed to: LizFlix@gmail.com
