Day Thirty-Five: Blades of Glory

BLADES OF GLORY

Starring:
-Will Ferrell
-Jon Heder
-Craig T. Nelson

Directed by: Josh Gordon & Will Speck

Screenplay Credits: Jeff Cox, Craig Cox, John Altschuler, & Dave Krinsky

MPAA Rating: PG-13 – for crude and sexual humor, language, a comic violent image, and some drug references


Jimmy MacElroy, one of many sexually ambiguous, galloping peacock figure skating champions has it all, a rich adoptive father, a crazy obsessed fan, a supportive coach (Nelson), and a catchy nickname (Skating’s Little Orphan Awesome). Sadly, he’s also tied for the gold medal with obnoxious bad boy skater Chazz Michael Michaels. Chazz has his own nickname (Sex on Ice) and an extraordinary amount of body hair.

We are also introduced to Stranz and Fairchild, (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) the “brother and sister darlings” of the skating world who dominate the couples division.

Chazz and Jimmy are displeased about having to share the gold and they get into a little scuffle on the ice. This gets both of them banned from men’s figure skating by Mr. Fee-hee-heeny.

Jimmy’s rich dad is no longer interested in his career, so Jimmy finds himself promptly unadopted and on the side of the road.

Three and ½ years later, Chazz is a boozy skater in a children’s ice show. After hitting rock bottom and vomiting in his enormous wizard head, Chazz finds himself out of a job. Jimmy is feeling restless and working in a skate shop when his creepy stalker shows up with the official skating rulebook and informs him that he’s found a glorious little loophole. While Jimmy was banned from his division- men’s singles- he is still eligible to compete in pair skating. Look out, Stranz and Fairchild!

Jimmy asks his old coach to recommend a partner for him, but Coach advises Jimmy to give it up. Jimmy goes searching for a partner and bumps into Chazz. They get into a fight, which is covered by a local news team. Coach catches the fight on TV and sees that Jimmy and Chazz would be the perfect partners. They finally give in and sign up for nationals. This infuriates Stranz and Fairchild, who force their younger sister Katie to spy on Chazz and Jimmy.

Coach tells the guys that they’ll be doing everything together in preparation for the competition. He floods an icy warehouse to use as a practice area and the fellas start training.

At last they’re ready for competition and dressed as fire and ice. They dance to that creepy song by Aerosmith that reminds me of Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan. It’s not a perfect routine, but they win the crowd over and receive rave reviews.

Chazz and Jimmy are friends now, hooray. But not all is well, because Stranz and Fairchild are out for blood and Coach wants the guys to try a controversial move that has never been successfully executed. Only one couple ever attempted the Iron Lotus and when they did, the woman was accidentally decapitated.

The guys practice, Jimmy and Katie fall in love, and Stranz chases Chazz with a crossbow. At last it’s time for the big competition in Montreal. S & F are JFK and Marilyn Monroe in a tacky number about forbidden love, and Jimmy and Chaz do a weird robot/Queen thing. Fairchild breaks her imitation pearls on the ice and Chazz breaks his ankle. The good news is, they land the Iron Lotus and everybody cheers. The Mounties show up to arrest Stranz and Fairchild, who kiss passionately. Jimmy and Chazz are given gold medals and they fly off into the sky together. It’s creepy.


Maybe I like this movie because I always wanted to be a figure skater when I was a kid. Don’t you judge me. It looks really fun. If you haven’t seen it, you aren’t missing too much. Will Ferrell plays pretty much the same character he plays in almost everything, and mercifully Jon Heder does absolutely nothing to remind me of Napoleon Dynamite.

I do love seeing Arnett and Poehler together. You can tell they have a great time together, and I bet their kid is really cute. I also liked that the filmmakers managed to get so many actual figure skaters to do cameos. And I would be remiss in my duties if I neglected to mention how wonderfully over the top and sparkly the spandex costumes are. That’s one thing that’s fun about watching professional skaters, all the crazy outfits. Some of them are straight up drag queen material (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Final Grade: B-

Off in search of snow cones,

M.