Blades Of Glory

So two men ice skating as a pair. GAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! That appears to be what the pitch for Blades of Glory consisted of. If in doubt about how to make a comedy use a titter inducing sport and feature straight men touching each other. Those young 'uns'll eat it up.

Thing is as bad as I've made Blades Of Glory sound it's actually pretty good. The cast is uniformly excellent combining the manic frenzy of the likes of Will Ferrel and Will Arnett with the straight person shtick of Jenna Fischer and Craig T. Nelson. Add Amy Poehler and that's one hell of a cast. I had one apprehension before viewing though; Jon Heder. At the time he appeared in this there was only Napolean Dynamite. I had to ask whether he'd be a bit like Gretna in the SPL. You can't begrudge him being there because of past achievements and he'll give his all, but ultimately would he be out of his depth amongst the big talent? After watching those fears have been relegated faster then Dunfermline from the First Division (I promise the Scottish fitba euphemisms will now stop). Heder is excellent, and perfect for the role he inhabits. Ferrel is on Anchorman as opposed to Elf form, on other words he's playing the bastard in love with himself. As good as he is in Elf, he saved the whole thing, I much prefer this sort of stuff from him. The thing is Heder may steal the movie from him, purely because we have seen this type of thing from Ferrel before.

Of the other performances husband and wife team Arnett and Poehler are hilarious as the baddies, although a major grumble is definitely that they are not on screen enough, and Nelson is perfectly cast as that ratchety old coach/father figure that's in all montage reliant movies. And credit to Jenna Fischer who has that oh so tough role in these movies of the straight person, there to help the more manic performers along by grounding everything. It's a role she has performed exceptionally well on the American version of the Office for about three years now and it has served her well in this. The straight performances in comedy can often go unnoticed and that's not fair because as I said, in many ways it can be the toughest role.

So far I've focused on the acting in Blades Of Glory and there's a reason for that. As much as the film features some very funny lines and situations, the "high speed" chase near the end is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages, a pursuit that starts off slick and very Hollywood like on ice but quickly descends into farce as Ferrel and Arnett continue on concrete still in their skates, for the most part there's something slightly lacking about the film. The main problem seems to be that while it strives for the zaniness of past Ferrel vehicles nothing in the script really hits those heights. In fact for the most part things are quite straight before a sudden burst of "wacky".

It is a damn funny film worth seeing with some excellent performances but ultimately the uneven tone stops it from being as great as the initial set up suggests.