'Blades Of Glory' Movie Review: Men on Ice

"Blades of Glory" is a gold medal on laughter, a silver on comedic acting, a bronze on visuals - all amidst being a loser with the story. Overall, it provides a number of guilty laughs for such a decapitation gag with a paper-thin premise. Interestingly though, it is able to glide itself on the ice stage rather than falling from the cracks of the thin ice it stands on.

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This silly, satirical comedy's main asset is its cast. The performances keep up with such a silly spoof that unexpectedly turns out sweet - where you get to find yourself chuckling and occasionally laughing out loud. Its wacky mood pushes the envelope with its pain jokes, crotch jokes, slapstick humor, acerbic escapades, absurdism, and physical comedy. Thrown at the wall in rapid succession, this vulgar flick scores as a comedy machine and a comic bluster.

Completely and shamelessly silly, "Blades of Glory" is roughly twice as good as a movie with such a thin comedic premise can normally become. It exceeds the general low expectations for such a predictable goof treat. There are a number of raunchy sight gags supported by silly and garish outfits, crazy hair, outrageous dialogue, beer-slob cracks, physical jokes, and masculinity in competitive figure skating. The movie elicits some solid entertainment that can make a moviegoer feel the worth of the ticket equating to the amount of belly laughs it provides.

"Blades of Glory" finds a target-rich environment for comedy in the figure skating arena. It captures the obvious eccentricities of the skating world and makes a gag out of the sport's absurd elements. You see Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) cavorting on the ice in their elaborate figure skating costumes. The sheer dreamy silliness of the skating spectacles and the eye-popping get-ups compensate for the maximum comic mileage of a fleshed-out sketch comedy idea about straight male bonding and homoeroticism in figure skating. And what makes the mindless concept work is the talented cast that does their thing accordingly. And the impressive digital trickery during the ice skating scenes adds up to the comic beat.

The directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon utilize the same obvious and predictable gags - recycling ideas within the usual comedic formula - and yet the movie manages to mark itself to feel a little different in terms of its commercial treatment. Amidst the goofy-minded and ridiculous plotting, a handful of scenes make up a certain guilty pleasure that tickles the funny bones.

The script's weakness leaves a certain demand for the cast to work for the flick's success. Ferrel and Heder make their characters as trifle as the tantrums of 5-year old kids fighting over a piece of candy. Chazz is a sex addict ruling the ice rink while in spandex and ice skates through his spontaneously macho jerk improvisation style. Jimmy is an angelic-faced child protégée that has evolved into a graceful ice skating athlete at the peak of his Olympic career.

The two are unwillingly thrown together to turn hilarious gags into a supply of intermittent laughs. With his little piggy eyes and his unfounded braggadocio, Ferrell's locker-room brand of humor blends with Heder's prim and proper moves and snappy reactions. They take turns in lifting each other in such dirty kinds of way as one's ankles wrapped around the other's neck and lifting the partner through his crotch. What makes this pair more amusing is seeing these two straight men putting the conventional masculinity to the test. While most men are busy being portrayed with the machismo of driving race cars, date-raping, smoking and drug-taking, fist-fighting, martial arts, and six pack abs, these two men live and fight for their figure skating...

If your only goal for going to the moviehouse is to indulge in mindless laughter, then you can't go wrong with "Blades of Glory."