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Blades of Glory ***

By Dan Hudak

      Figure skating is so ripe for parody it’s shocking that it took so long for a movie like “Blades of Glory” to be made. Think about it: extravagant and colorful skin-tight costumes, notoriously snotty judges and athletes who hire goons to take a tire iron to their competition’s kneecaps is already great material for a comedy. Throw in technical terms no one understands (the difference between a triple lutz and triple toe loop, anyone?) and the fact that the winner is the person who ice skates more impressively for five minutes and you’re sitting on a comedic goldmine.

      And really, who better to make a fool of himself in an undersized leotard than Will Ferrell, whom we’ve already seen streaking in “Old School” and wearing tights in “Elf”? Ferrell is Chazz Michael Michaels, a nymphomaniac and alcoholic figure skater whose “freestyle” maneuvers make it look like he’s ice dancing rather than figure skating. He’s considered one of the best in the world, but after he shares the Gold Medal at the World Wintersport Games (i.e. the Olympics) with archrival Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) the two get in a fight and are banned from competitive skating.

      After 3 ½ years of toiling in obscurity, Jimmy’s stalker (Nick Swardson) finds a way to get him back on the ice: pairs figure skating! And because a loophole finds that there are no rules against all-male pairs teams, Jimmy and Chazz begrudgingly join forces and, with the help of Jimmy’s old coach (Craig T. Nelson), take on the vaunted brother-sister team of Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, respectively) for the title of best in the world.

      While there’s no great challenge in making a mockery of something as inherently silly as figure skating, directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck do a good job of poking fun at aspects the casual viewer can appreciate. The ridiculous dance routines, pseudo-intense practice sessions and backstage back-stabbings are then nicely complemented by dialogue and situational humor that rarely misses: “zip it or I’ll punch you in your crap-lousy face,” Heder’s Jimmy says to Chazz in his inescapable “Napoleon Dynamite” voice. Not to be outdone, Ferrell’s Chazz walks into a room with his plump paunch exposed and proudly taunts Jimmy by saying: “I just wanted to show you what a real skater’s body looks like.”

      With the success of this movie Ferrell is inarguably one of the funniest and most consistent comedians working today. When he’s on — as he was in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and is here — there’s no one who draws more laughs over the course of a 90-minute movie.

      Yes, real figure skaters are tremendous athletes who work incredibly hard to master their sport. But that doesn’t make the sport relevant more than once every four years when you watch the Olympics with the secret hope of seeing people choke during the most important moment in their lives. Thank goodness “Blades of Glory” has finally given us a legitimate reason to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

      And laugh we do — out loud, often and without hesitation. To rate it in figure skating terms, it deserves 5.7 out of 6: solid throughout, with just a few missteps keeping it from perfection. Still, Nancy Kerrigan would be proud.

Comments? E-mail dhudak22@yahoo.com