Film review: Blades of Glory

If anyone's to blame for my viewing of Blades of Glory, it's the team behind Anchorman. As I have mentioned many times, Anchorman is the stuff of comedic legend for me, as it took a mildly unexciting plot and used absurd, random jokes to turn it into a quotable machine, pumping out enough memorable lines to enable three UC Davis students to engage in a lengthy conversation consisting of but quotes from the movie...and laughter.

So what was wrong with Blades?

Simply put, it just wasn't up to the caliber of legendary Anchorman or even Talladega Nights.

The story itself seems like the kind to generate at the very least cheap laughs, and the plot does deliver. Jim McElroy (Napoleon Dyna...err, I mean Jon Heder) is the efemminite graceful skater; Chaz Michael Michaelson (Will Ferrell) is his bad ass, lady-lovin' nemesis. Together, they share a gold medal at the movie's Olympics, but verbal sparring at the award's podium leads to physical fisticuffs, and their disgraceful showing prompts a lifetime ban...from men's singles. Years later, neither prepared to give up, a stalker informs them that they can slip into the "mixed" doubles figure skating competition and try to reclaim some of their lost glory.

As you might expect, the result is comic outrage, with plenty of gay jokes (among them, "As if figure skating wasn't gay enough already") and awkward situations left to play out. And the situations themselves are funny; the movie itself just doesn't follow suit, as Ferrell and Heder's lines often seemed forced and lack the smooth nature of all of Anchorman, Will Arnett is absolutely unfunny and almost all his lines lack the zest of those in the gag reel, and none of the other characters offer enough lines to even make an impression. Jenna Fischer, playing Heder's love interest and Arnett and Amy Ploeher's younger, guilt-ridden sister, is quaint and attractive, but despite her alleged commitment to morals, she never ceases to do the wrong thing, even with the best intentions. Craig T. Nelson, worth at least a mention, is cast as...a coach...which sounds oddly familiar.

If there's any one film that Blades reminds me of, it's Juwanna Mann, a story about a disgraced athlete at the top of his game that must enter a new area of his sport and change his self-centered ways to resurrect his livelihood. But see, that's the problem with Blades: Juwanna had built-in laughs from all the cross-dressing, dual-identity jokes that Miguel Nunes milked for most of the film's humor. Blades, on the other hand, had only a short string of predictable gay jokes to run on, so when those were exhausted--quickly--all that's left is the random one-liners that carried Anchorman. So, while the story plays out well, and the movie never takes itself seriously, the one-liners fail to deliver and so the movie misses the chance to capitalize on comedians put into a funny situation.

Tomorrow, I think I'll extend my review of Cormac McCarthy's novel (and future cinematic release) No Country for Old Men.