Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Putting
the Laughs on Ice
(Blades of Glory, 4/9/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Tom
Cruise's stardom was built on a string of movies with the same story.
In this script, Tom is a "natural" at some vocation (jet pilot,
pool player, race-car driver, bartender) but also a loose cannon. After
suffering a setback, the arrogant kid learns a little humility, which
ultimately allows him to excel even more. Recently, Will Ferrell has
emerged as Cruise's comic shadow, playing a dim-but-cocky anchorman
(The Legend of Ron Burgundy), a dim-but-cocky race-car driver
(Talledega Nights), and now a dim-but-cocky figure skater in
Blades of Glory. Formulaic? Sure, but at least the laughs in
Ferrell's movies are intentional.
That said, Blades offers
itself as a mostly harmless, occasionally funny, very forgettable way
to blow a wet spring afternoon. Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels,
an oversexed dufus who performs in the Elvis Stojko "macho"
mode of male figure skating. Michaels, they say, earned his chops in
the tough world of the Detroit sewer-skating scene (but how tough can
it be if a guy named "Chazz" can survive it?). Standing in
the way of total rink domination is Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder), a lissome
blond with perfect moves but no personality left after a toxic childhood
as a kid phenom.
When the rivals get in a brawl that
earns them permanent banishment from their sport, MacElroy's coach (Craig
T. Nelson) comes up with a radical plan (and here's the high-concept
part someone loved over his Cobb salad at Spago): Michaels and MacElroy
are individually barred from skating, but there's nothing in the rules
preventing them from competing as an all-male pair. Can two guys who
can barely stand to touch each other become a team? Can they survive
the Tonya Harding-Jeff Gillooly treatment by their rivals, the Van Waldenbergs
(Amy Poehler and Will Arnett)? Will the stodgy figure skating establishment
let two men skate together in competition? Can anybody really doubt
it?
No matter what the quality of his
movies, it's hard to imagine Will Ferrell's star going anywhere but
up. As a tall, physically imposing figure who delights in playing thick,
infantile oafs, he perfectly captures the paradox of modern maleness.
Jon Heder, on the other hand, is pretty much relegated to the straight-man
role. Heder will always be a harder sell—his comic talents may
be drier than the Utah desert, but that Napoleon Dynamite brand
of humor just doesn't play at the multiplex. The film also wastes the
talents of Saturday Night Live's Amy Poehler, a gifted sketch-comic
who isn't given anything funny to do.
If comedy depends on familiarity,
then Blades of Glory is plenty funny. If it depends on surprise,
then there's not much to laugh at here—with one conspicuous exception.
At one point, Chazz Michael Michaels tries to pump up his audience by
pulling off his jockstrap and throwing it to a fan. That fan turns out
to be Olympic silver medalist Sasha Cohen, who squeals with delight
. . . and sniffs it. In Ferrell's next film, where he plays a dim-but-cocky
basketball player, will Kobe Bryant be up for whiffing Ferrell's sweaty
shorts? I can definitely wait to find out.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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