‘Blades of Glory’: Slow
Start, Strong Finish
© By Kevin Paquet, 2007

"Blades of Glory" actually starts off kind of slowly for a Will Ferrell movie—nothing gets broken or set on fire for several minutes.

Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels, a spectacularly obnoxious figure skater, who, at the beginning of the film, is competing against Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder). MacElroy and Michaels tie each other and, forced to share the winner’s stand, they get into a shoving match that ends with a mascot being set on fire and both of them being banned from men’s figure skating.

The movie then skips forward three and a half years. MacElroy is now a well-intentioned but fundamentally conceited skate shop employee, and Michaels is the Evil Wizard for a kid’s ice skating show. MacElroy learns that due to a technicality in the rule book, he hasn’t been banned from the sport, just from men’s singles. He can still compete in pairs. You probably know this already, of course, because this moment appears in the "Blades of Glory" television trailers that have been appearing, more or less continuously, on TV since the middle of March.

Michaels, who has just been fired after throwing up, on ice, in the wizard suit, runs into MacElroy. Later on, after watching the local news, MacElroy’s old trainer (Craig T. Nelson) stops by the police station to talk with them, and they sort of agree to work together as the first all-male skating pair.

This doesn’t sit well with Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, respectively), a dominating brother-sister team who send their younger sibling Katie (Jenna Fischer) to spy on Chazz and Jimmy. She secretly videotapes their practice, but Coach has a secret up his sleeve—a hazardous skating move previously used only in North Korea.

This movie gets continuously better as it goes along, so if it seems a little slow at first, give it time. The character of Chazz Michael Michaels is classic Ferrell – an obnoxious and dimwitted man who is nevertheless capable of kindness.

In fact, the only character who can really match Ferrell for insane intensity is Will Arnett as Stranz. In what is probably the best sequence of the movie, what begins as a dramatic on-ice chase ends up as a staggering over-land walk in skates as he tries to get Chazz.

This is only the second Jon Heder movie I’ve seen. Heder was famous after "Napoleon Dynamite," and his acting here, though not spectacular, at least proves to me that he is capable of being more.

Bonus points for the crossbow attack, the guided phone conversation and Ferrell as the Evil Wizard. Kevin gives "Blades of Glory" four stars out of five.