Blades of Glory: Comedy. Starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett,
Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer and Craig T. Nelson. Directed by Will Speck and Josh
Gordon. (PG-13. 93 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings
and show times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to
sfgate.com/movies.)
Decades before Neil Simon’s inspired christening, the odd couple already
was a staple of American comedy. Something about the pairing of mismatched
souls cracks up audiences. A duo must possess different emotional temperaments,
and the funniest — epitomized by Laurel and Hardy — are physical
opposites as well.
In “Blades of Glory,” Will Ferrell and Jon Heder meet all the
time-honored parameters, including another must: maleness. A dissertation could
be written on the mind-set that has failed to produce a female Martin and Lewis
or Oscar and Felix.
Without ingenious casting of the lead characters, competitive figure
skaters, this latest comedy pitched to adolescent minds (or the adolescent at
heart) would have been skating on thin ice. It lacks the zany originality of
Ferrell’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and the deadpan humor
of Heder’s sleeper hit, “Napoleon Dynamite.”
But one look at the chunky macho Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) in a
sparkling red and gold costume standing beside the effeminate and very blond
Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) sheathed in powder blue, and you’re under the thrall of
a new peculiar couple.
Both actors appear to be having fun outmaneuvering each other on the ice
and onscreen. Ferrell puffs up his chest every time Chazz is referred to as sex
on ice. Heder is as pixie-ish and light on his feet as Tinkerbell.
Fierce rivals, Chazz and Jimmy are banned from the sport for life after
engaging in a scuffle on the podium where they are to be awarded a shared gold
medal. (Their fate is decided by Brian Boitano, Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming
and Nancy Kerrigan, although, alas, no Tonya Harding.)
Flash forward several years, and a determined coach (Craig T. Nelson,
reprising a familiar role from TV) rescues Chazz from a kiddie ice review and
Jimmy from peddling gym shoes by merging them into the first male
figure-skating pair. What’s a loophole allowing men to compete together in this
category in a script with so many holes it could be composed on Swiss cheese?
Yet it’s the movie’s very cheesiness that keeps you watching, sometimes unable
to believe your eyes. For example, a skater practicing a move so dangerous that
it’s being tried out in North Korea is accidentally beheaded by the blade of
her partner’s skate.
There’s a drollness almost worthy of Christopher Guest in the way “Blades
of Glory” parodies classic pairs ice skating routines performed to overwrought
musical accompaniment and the pompous commentators who prattle on about them.
The ridiculous peacock and leopard-skin costumes are close enough to what
competitors actually wear to be aghast anew at such bad taste.
Directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon are novices at feature films, and
their inexperience shows in the flatness of some scenes and sluggish pacing.
But the many years they spent making commercials pay off in the movie’s high
point: glowing mini-biopics of contenders re-created with all the studied
phoniness of the genre. In one, a brother-and-sister team (real life husband
and wife Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, camping it up) are shown bouncing back
from their parents’ deaths by car crash, returning to the rink within hours of
the funeral.
The siblings are Chazz and Jimmy’s main competitors. Arnett and especially
Poehler grimace too often to signal the skaters’ evil intentions to do anything
to win. They send their virginal sister (”The Office’s” Jenna Fischer) to
seduce first Jimmy and then Chazz, knowing that the latter is in treatment for
sex addiction and will be unlikely to resist even if it means alienating his
new buddy and spoiling their chances on the ice.
In a further parody of serious movies about sports, it all comes down to
that final competition. It’s worth the admission price just to watch Ferrell
and Heder, both more than 6 feet tall, take turns lifting each other and to see
Heder’s ankles wrapped around his co-star’s neck. They make an odd pair, the
best friends a comedy can have.
– Advisory: Mild sexual references.
E-mail Ruthe Stein at rstein@sfchronicle.com.