MOVIE REVIEW! - "Blades of Glory"

I have a fondness for this short, yet flawed, review. It’s the first one I ever wrote. I posted it to MySpace back when that was a thing and just wanted to share my thoughts with my friends. At the time, I gave this movie a perfect score, but that was a bit much I must say.

I’ve amended the score to four out of five stars. The movie is, in my opinion, still an incredibly funny movie. However, I mention in this review that the movie doesn’t rely on a lot of gay jokes about two dudes skating together, but do want to stress that there are a couple of moments that may may you cringe a little.

It really isn’t that bad and the jokes are not played to be negative overall, but they probably would have been omitted today. Still, if you’re a fan of 2000s comedies, this one holds up pretty well.

THE ORIGINAL REVIEW

“Blades of Glory” stars Will Ferrell and Jon Heder who surprisingly make a great comedy duo. Will is, of course, the crazy and outspoken character while Jon Heder is the straight man. It’s not that Heder’s character isn’t in any way outrageous, it’s just that Ferrell takes his character to a whole new level that makes Heder’s character seem tame by comparison.

The movie is about two male singles figure skaters who are kicked out of the sport after tying for the gold and fighting with one another because neither could accept that the other one was the winner. A coach, Robert Goddard (Craig T. Nelson) decides to coach them as the first ever male figure skating duo.

Will Ferrell and Jon Heder play two skaters who must work together in "Blades of Glory"!

What I liked about the movie is that it is the first movie in awhile to actually be a comedy (“Man of the Year”, for example, was actually more of a dramedy featuring Robin Williams doing a little bit of comedy). Ferrell is funny as hell and delivers the goods as Chazz Michaels, a sex addict who can’t help himself.

Heder is a character who was trained since he was a kid and a bit of a whiner. The whining part could have been overdone easily and made the character irredeemable. Yet Heder masterfully keeps it to a minimum. The rest of the supporting cast is strong as well.

The biggest compliment that I can give to this movie, however, is the fact that the filmmakers could have decided to make one big gay joke out of the two male figure skaters that now have to skate together. Instead, they decided to tastefully avoid this, though there are one or two spectators that briefly question the idea. There is no real negative gay humor in the movie, so kudos to the producers.

The only real problem I had with the movie is that they did not give Nelson much to work with when Nelson has proven that he has a good comedic presence. Also, the film’s love story plays itself out like we’ve seen a hundred times in other movies. The boy meets girl, the boy or girl do something to screw it up, and by the end, the boy or girl makes up for said mistake and they fall in love. It’s a tired formula and this film brings nothing new to the table.

At the end of the day, though, “Blades of Glory” proves to be one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in recent years and one of the best comedies, so far, of 2007.