There are a couple of inspired comedic moments throughout Blades of Glory, and all of them are found in the scenes when the two lead characters (played by Will Ferrell and Jon Heder) are on the ice. This being a comedy about championship ice figure skating, I suppose this is a good thing. Too bad Blades of Glory spends so much time away from the skating rink, and decides to focus instead on a convoluted and idiotic plot that we can't care too much about. Directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck seem to treat most of the film as mindless filler, and it suffers because of it. Whenever the characters and the script itself are off the ice, the laughs stop and the tired and creaky storytelling takes over.

Rival figure skaters Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) are both at the top of their games in the mens' single skating competition. Jimmy was adopted as a young boy by a billionaire who trained him to be the perfect athlete. Chazz is the sex-addicted "bad boy" of the sport who skates to 80s rock anthems, and prefers to break the rules. When they both wind up tying for the Gold Medal at a competition, a fight breaks out between the two during the award ceremony that results in both of them getting banned from the sport. Three and a half years later, both men are mere shells of their former glory, until an obsessed fan of Jimmy's who has been stalking him for years clues him in on a loophole - They were both banned from single men's figure skating, but that doesn't mean they couldn't compete together as a couples team. With Jimmy's old coach (Craig T. Nelson) training them, the two men must put aside their past rivalry and become the first male couples figure skating team in the history of the sport. Thrown into the plot are the scheming current champions of the couples figure skating world (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) who are plotting to sabotage the competition's chances of winning, and a love interest for Jimmy in the form of the younger sister of the evil figure skating pair (Jenna Fischer) who is being manipulated by her siblings.

When Blades of Glory is focusing solely on its overly-worn and tired plot, the film lumbers along, checking off the expected plot points on its invisible check list of cliches. Only when the movie switches to the ice competition scenes does the movie gain the sense of lunacy that a movie like this needs. The characters of Chazz and Jimmy are great comedic ideas, but they simply don't work off the ice. Whenever they're not wearing skates, they simply go through the motions. Ferrell gives the same egotistical and vain idiot ladies' man performance he's given in his past comedies like Anchorman or Talladega Nights, while Heder once again gives us another variation on his Napoleon Dynamite character. (I almost have an image in my head of Heder standing in front of a mirror whenever he gets a new role, doing his Napoleon Dynamite voice, then altering it ever so slightly so it appears new.) On the ice, when the two are forced to perform together in ways and positions that find them both closer to each other's crotches than they probably would ever want to be, the movie finds the right tone. The tone of the comedy is not homophobic, rather it is one of awkwardness. The very look on the faces of Ferrell and Heder as they try not to look at each other's privates as they lift each other up over their heads had me laughing. Their grimaces and shifting eyes tell the whole story. They're both in a position they never thought they would find themselves in, and are not sure how to react at what they are seeing. There are some other good laughs, such as when the evil figure skating couple do their act based on the relationship between JFK and Marilyn Monroe. We, unfortunately, only see highlight glimpses of this act. I would have loved to have seen it in its entirety.

These moments made me laugh, as they are filled with a kinetic and delightfully off the wall energy. That's why it's such a shame that the film keeps on going back to that darn plot. Maybe this movie would have worked better as a "mockumentary" on figure skating. The film certainly has enough cameos from the figure skating world to qualify, including Nancy Kerrigan, Brian Boitano and Sasha Cohen. Unfortunately, it can't think of an original thing to do with these cameos, just like it can't think of anything original to do with its story. I'm sure that plot was the last thing on the minds of the four screenwriters credited to the script, but they often seem to have forgotten that they were supposed to be writing a comedy. The jokes fall flat, and it keeps on focusing too much on its own cliches. The dialogue and the humor does not fly fast or hit hard enough. Farrell gets a couple mild chuckles here and there, but they sound like lines he improvised right there on the set, so I don't know if should credit the script or not. All I know is that the movie that surrounds the figure skating sequences lack spark. The actors seem to realize it too, as the performances are equally leaden for most of the film. We get a love relationship between Heder and Fischer's character that could have been left on the cutting room floor for all the attention the film gives it, were it not for the fact this relationship was required in order to break up the relationship between Ferrell and Heder briefly. Craig T. Nelson as the coach is completely wasted in a thankless role that delivers no laughs and doesn't let him get in on the fun. He simply stands in the background and barks orders, while Ferrell and Heder do the funny stuff. As the lead villains, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler (who are married in real life) are completely one-dimensional and fail to deliver anything resembling a chuckle.
This is the kind of movie where you can see that the filmmakers were onto something, but didn't go all the way with it. I laughed quite a bit at Blades of Glory, but found myself bored much more frequently. The movie should have been sharper, smarter and more satirical instead of focusing on moldy love triangles and jealous stuck up villains. We've seen all of that before, and don't need to see it again. Especially not when there's some great material lying underneath. When you come right down to it, Blades of Glory is just lukewarm leftovers that have been thrown together with very little care.

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