Blades of Glory Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)March 30th, 2007
BLADES OF GLORY
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2007 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
"An ice devouring sex tornado," Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) is the world famous, pot-bellied bad boy of the ice skating world -- as well as the adult film industry. The mere mention of Chazz's name causes announcers to swoon in a never-ending sea of accolades for him, from "sex on ice" to "a tsunami of swagger."
His competition for the glory and the gold is always his archrival Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE). A guy clearly in touch with his feminine side, Jimmy's signature routine is his famous "galloping peacock" that ends with him unleashing a dove, which he carefully conceals in his pants.
In BLADES OF GLORY, a film that could have gone wrong in so many ways, Ferrell and Heder prove to be a perfectly matched pair of comedic skaters who have an uncountable number of wonderfully delicious bits of physical comedy. Fast and funny, the film is simply a whole lot of fun. Completely and shamelessly silly, the movie elicits more than enough big laughs to make even the most cynical and parsimonious moviegoer feel like he got his money's worth of entertainment. It is so over the top at times that there appears to be no top whatsoever.
Early on in the story, both skaters are banned from competitive figure skating for life, but they come back due to a technicality that allows them to compete so long as they dance as the world's first male-male pair. Putting their rivalry aside, they practice hard for the big meet against the Van Waldenbergs, a brother and sister pair of twins, played with devilish delight by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler.
The fiendish twins, who will stop at nothing to try to break up their new rivals, send their innocent sister Katie (Jenna Fischer, "The Office") to seduce both Jimmy and Chazz. (A funny side story concerns the ever-horny Chazz's sex addiction. He attends an AA-like organization called Sex Addicts. As Luke Wilson leads the group, everyone in the room is luring someone else with their eyes.)
As Jimmy and Chazz go for the gold, they have a secret weapon -- a move called the "Iron Lotus." No skater has ever performed it without decapitating his fellow skater. During practice, Chazz fails fifty times in a row, as evidenced by the severed heads of the dummies he practiced on, but once on the official ice, he hopes to be able perform it successfully for the first time. The tension mounts.
BLADES OF GLORY runs a very fast 1:33. It is rated PG-13 for "crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image and some drug references" and would be acceptable for kids around 11 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 30, 2007. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
