Film Review Blades Of Glory Bio

Film Review Blades of Glory

Saturday, April 14, 2007 - Originally, I had no intention of seeing this movie. In fact, I tried not to see Blades of Glory. I told my son I wouldn't be reviewing it, and he went to see it with his older cousin. However, after both of them telling me how great it was, and it leading the box office the past few weeks, I had to see what all the fuss was about.

Blades of Glory stars Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as figure skating rivals, Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy. Jimmy was somewhat of a child prodigy and was adopted out of an orphanage at age 4. Now an adult, he's become the most effeminate male dancer, with a signature move of "The Galloping Peacock." Chazz is the complete antithesis if of Jimmy, a sex addict skating in all leather to “The Stroke” by Billy Squier. While Jimmy has an adult male fan stalker, Chazz gets bras thrown to him onstage. They tie for the gold medal, and while standing on the podium underneath the American flag, they start a fight with each other that ends in the Games mascot catching on fire.

The National Figure Skating Association whose panel includes Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, and Brian Boitano, decides after the melee that Chazz and Jimmy are banned from competing in their division again for the rest of their lives and strip them of all their medals. Despite the fact he's 26, Jimmy's father "unadopts" him, and fires Jimmy's coach, played by Craig T Nelson. Jimmy winds up working at a "Ski 'n Shred" shop. Chazz becomes an alcoholic and the wizard in Grublets On Ice.

Jimmy's fan stalker informs him that he's not out of skating for life, necessarily, because he can still skate in pairs, and Jimmy runs into Chazz while looking for female skaters to pair up with. Nelson sees the results of the chance meeting, yet another melee, on television, and realizes the two rivals would be quite an interesting pair. He bails them out of jail, and they set out to make history, as they create new rivals in pairs skaters Stranz and Fairchild (Will Arnett / Amy Poehler, real life husband and wife), a brother/sister team with a relationship that borders on incest.

Up until this point in the movie, I wasn't laughing, and I wasn't even smiling. But somehow the comedy surfaces once Heder and Ferrell pair up. Part of the humor is Chazz always getting his wording and phrasing wrong, like talking about a situation being mind-bottling instead of mind-boggling, and when he's told to take his shoes off before he walks on the Berber, he thinks that's a baby food. He also thinks it's Louis Armstrong that went to the moon.

Heder doesn't necessarily get the funny lines, but he does get the romantic role as he falls in love with the sister of Stranz and Fairchild. Arnett and Poehler provide funny situations as they never seem to leave their skating persona to the point of doing everything together and always being dressed in flashy skating costumes. They're the villains of this story, cheating in order to win the gold.

While I can't say I left the theatre seeing the movie I thought I'd see, I did leave the theatre with a smile on my face. Out of all the movies out in theatres right now, I don't see this one as number one, and the one more people want to see, yet it was still an enjoyable movie and funny, just not as much as I expected from the hype. If you don't mind sex addict jokes, and come with an open mind, you will enjoy Blades of Glory.

Yuddy Score: A Yud for those not expecting too much

-Laura Tucker




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