Blades of Glory :: Wessex Scene Online

Blades of Glory

Get Ready to Kick Some Ice

5th May 2007
Matt Aylott

About this film

Title	Blades of Glory
Director	Josh Gordon
Release Date	6 April 2007
Certificate
Genres	Comedy, Romance, Sport
Our Rating	3.0/5.0
Shown at Union Films Sunday 9th September 2007 7:00pm

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More by Matt Aylott

Oct 07 - Transformers
Feb 07 - Night at the Museum
Nov 06 - What Uni can’t teach you, Borat can?
Nov 06 - The Departed
Aug 05 - I am Kloot - Over my shoulder

Blades of Glory Trailer

Stripped of their gold medals for unsportsmanlike conduct, sexaholic Chazz and workaholic Jimmy are rivals who use a loophole to return to their favourite sport.

That’s as much of an introduction as you need and really that’s all there is to this light-hearted homage to the homoeroticism of figure skating.

The film is just the latest outlandish sport to be given the Frat-Pack treatment, following Dodgeball, Kicking & Screaming and Talladega Nights. Of course, after Ferrell and Heder are done, it bears no similarity to any sport practiced on earth.

Let’s be honest Will Ferrell has gone off the boil since Anchorman. He has settled comfortably into the comedic trap of repeating his most popular persona and the pay check-cashing nature of this performance is fairly apparent. Ferrell actually graduated in Sports Information from the University of Southern California and begun his career as a sports broadcaster, which further alludes to the fact that this is safe territory for a comic genius who should be exercising his comedic muscles a little more, as he did with Stranger Than Fiction.

Both he and Heder (who does little more than fill in the interludes between Ferrell sketches) glide in but are on thin ice from the start, with a tired script which is completely devoid of heart. The premise and product is shallow and sketchy, showing a bare minimum of effort from director, writers and actors. Blades of Glory tries to work maximum comic mileage from heterosexual men’s fear of proximity to other men’s penises. It says a lot about the film that the highlight is Ferrell lifting Heder by the crotch to the music of Flash Gordon.

The script’s failure leaves a heavy burden on the cast, and how they compensate is both a testament to their talent and a waste of it. Eventually the film’s limitations catch up with it, and you start feeling like you’ve seen all this before. There are still moments of brilliance but not enough to keep you to the end of the credits to see those outtakes which are invariably better than the actual feature these days.

In my uneducated opinion Blades of Glory is far less amusing than watching real figure skating, which already does enough to parody itself. The film is too broad to be satire and not cutting enough by half to be compelling – subplots and villains are underdeveloped, failing to engage the viewer in any meaningful way. This movie certainly isn’t in the same rink as its predecessors with an instantly forgettable script as thin as Kate Moss and as subtle as her coke addiction.

This ain’t no rich satirical comic escapade – or should that be ice-capade – it’s more Dancing on Ice but with fewer laughs and less plot. While I still think Will Ferrell is a hilarious guy, these blades are disappointingly dull.