April 11, 2007 – Will Ferrell has abandoned the racetrack of "Tallegada Nights" for the skating rink in "Blades of Glory," a farce on ice. Some critics say it's a good thing; others look the other way.
Ferrell puts his own comic touch on the graceful, elegant arena of figure skating. More a figure than a skater, Ferrell is all ego as Chazz Michael Michaels, rock star of the rink.
Misha Davenport of the Chicago Sun-Times says, "He's skating on some very thin ice here."
Eleanor Ringell Gillespie, the hard-to-please critic of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, calls the movie "an outrageously funny farce."
While admitting it's "formulaic," she adds, "it's formula done right."
Michaels is the vain, sex-addicted bad boy of men's figure skating. Women fans throw their bras on the ice instead of the usual flowers, while the judges shower him with near-perfect scores.
Until, that is, he has a dustup with his main rival for the gold, Jimmy MacElroy (played by John Heder of "Napoleon Dynamite" fame).
MacElroy is everything Michaels is not. Spotted by an enterprising billionaire as a youth executing triple lutzes on the frozen pond of an orphanage, MacElroy was whisked away to days of endless training and now stands as the picture of poise, the personification of the highest ideals of men's skating, something Michaels doesn't really aspire to.
But Michaels does want to win. When he and MacElroy get into a fight after they tie for the world championship, they are stripped of their medals and banned from the sport for life.
Three years later Chazz works kiddie shows, drunk, while MacElroy fits bratty kids for skates in a sporting goods store. Then Michaels finds out that there is a loophole in the skating federation's rules that will allow him to compete again. All he has to do is compete in the partners division, and what better partner than MacElroy?
Therein lies the story.
Michael Phillips, in the Chicago Tribune, says, "I have no idea if Ferrell's latest will strike 'Talladega Nights' fans as too much of a retread, or not enough of one, or too outre in its comic vibe … But fundamentally 'Blades of Glory' works; it's full of laughs both subtle and ridiculous. And it's a full-on comic partnership between Ferrell and Heder, whether one of them is lifting the other by the crotch over his head or not. While it's full of cheap, low, stupid slapstick (I'm fine with all three), the verbal gags are faster and more plentiful than they were in 'Talladega.'"
One moment in the movie, which has caused the rating folks to call it a "comic, violent image," occurs when the two skaters are trying to perfect the creme de la creme of all skating moves, the dreaded "Iron Lotus."
The film shows what has happened in the past when the move goes awry, which Phillips calls the "funniest beheading in the history of film." Offhand, one would think that's a category that stands alone in its field.
Inevitably, with two men paired in the partners division, and as one practices crotch lifts with the other, the question of amour between the two raises its head. Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe says, "Strictly speaking, of course, Michaels and MacElroy aren't gay. Yet … the movie doesn't care if you think they are. Not that anyone here seems to care about something as mundane as orientation. 'Blades of Glory' is just gayish, with an even more outlandish finale than 'Talladega Nights.'"
Somehow Ferrell has become our chief satirist of masculinity. And with that NASCAR movie and this new one, he's turned Hollywood's garden-variety homophobia into giddy homophilia, giving the world a pair of movies any queen could enjoy alongside his frat-house buddies.
"Blades of Glory" runs an hour and 33 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language, and some drug references. To say nothing of the "comic, violent image."
It is playing at Market Square East.
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