Bostonist at the Movies: Blades of Glory

Blades of Glory fills a specific comedy niche - the nuts 'n' butts genre. There's nut jokes, butt jokes, and body-part jokes galore. Despite the emphasis on the pratfall and the gross-out joke, Will Ferrell and Jon Heder's brand of physical comedy pulls the sloppy script up a few notches.

Even though all sports have been satirized to death, figure skating truly deserves mockery. As Chazz Michael Michaels, a male Tonya Harding, Will Ferrell resembles a slab of beef sliding across the ice. No amount of special effects makes that greasy, hot mess of a man look graceful. But Chazz makes up for his failings with supposed sexual potency. He's the kind of skater who can also star in a porn opus named - wait for it - "The Iceman Cometh."

Jon Heder is Chazz's prissy rival, Jimmy MacElroy, and Heder plays the character like a mashup of Brian Boitano and Owen Wilson. His upstanding, clean-living skater is the perfect foil to Ferrell's "ice-skating back-door lover."

As is to be expected in all these movies, the two get into a public brawl and are swiftly banned from skating for life. Humbled, they must struggle their way into the spotlight by overcoming their differences.

This plot could have been generated by a computer or a five-year-old. But Chazz' decline into ice-capade hell is hilarious because no one does self-pity and despair better than Will Ferrell. While skating for the bargain-basement "Grublets on Ice," helmed by Boston's beloved Rob Corddry, Chazz guzzles booze, fondles trampy wood nymphs, and vomits inside the head of his wizard costume.

A series of unlikely circumstances brings Chazz and Jimmy together to compete as the first all-male skating pair. Completely blind to the fact that figure skating already pushes gender boundaries to the limit, Chazz, Jimmy, and skating fans are revolted at the thought of two men skating together. One fan plops two hot dogs in a bun and asks the camera, "Does this look right to you?"

Adding to the gender confusion, a sexually ambiguous, mullet-sporting Craig T. Nelson and his equally sexually ambiguous partner (Romany Malco) eventually coach the two to greatness. Of course, nuts are crushed and cracked along the way as Chazz hoists Jimmy up in the air by the crotch and the two crash into each other in a painful scissor move.

In the parallel plot, rival figure skaters Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler) send their bullied sister Katie (Jenna Fischer) out to disrupt Chazz and Jimmy's relationship. This, of course, leads to romance between Katie and Jimmy. The evil-skater subplot is a throwaway, but Arnett and Poehler are at their coldest, meanest, and bitchiest. They give Ferrell a run for his money as they serve up two riotous skating spoofs - an interpretation of "urban culture" to the tune of Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations" and a dramatic re-enactment of JFK and Marilyn's relationship, complete with pills and a Heimlich maneuver.

Unfortunately, while the main four stars get all the good scenes, comedic talents like Fischer, Malco, and Corddry are wasted. That problem plagues the whole movie - it has a laserlike focus on Ferrell and Heder that everything else seems like an afterthought.

That said, Will Ferrell plus nuts 'n' butts jokes always equals a few laughs. Even if you can't distinguish Blades of Glory from any other dumb comedy, you won't feel too bad for plunking down your money for this. Just make sure you save a few bucks by seeing the matinee.

Promotional shot of Craig T. Nelson, Romany Malco, Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, and a nut joke waiting to happen from IMDB.