BLADES OF GLORY

Paramount Pictures
93 min., dir. by Will Speck and Josh Gordon, with Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, and Amy Poehler

When rival figure skaters Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) go ballistic in an embarrassing, no-holds-barred fight at the World Championships, they are stripped of their gold medals and banned from the sport for life. Now, three and a half years on, they’ve found a loophole that will allow them to compete: if they can put aside their differences, they can skate together: in pairs’ figure skating.

Will Ferrell movies aren’t for everyone, including me. I am finding it hard to write this review because I didn’t care about it. Then again, I don’t usually care for Will Ferrell in the first place. I do like him in ensemble casts like Old School and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and last year’s Stranger Than Fiction was one I enjoyed immensely. But the majority of his starring roles I can do without. Anyways, I just didn’t care about the characters. There wasn’t anything to like about them. Ferrell was his usual oblivious moron, with an added addiction: sex (which he never gets from what I saw, I might add). Heder I can’t stand. I’ll give him some credit for Napoleon Dynamite, but I thought that was slightly overrated. Heder just keeps proving that he has no talent. For a comedy to work it either has to be a parody, a satire, or just have heart. This movie is none of those. It’s hard to care for two complete idiots. I got a few chuckles here and there but most were either ice skating jokes that went over my head or just plain weren’t funny.

Besides Ferrell and Heder we get Jenna Fischer of “The Office.” She plays Heder’s love interest who is supposed to be spying on them for her seemingly inbred siblings the Van Waldenbergs (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler). I can understand why she would do a film like this — with the popularity of “The Office” she is trying to get her name out there, and I really can’t blame her. But Craig T. Nelson, WTF were you thinking? Did you really need a paycheck that badly? Have a little dignity. Romany Malco from The 40 Year Old Virgin makes an appearance as a dance instructor who choreographs Ferrell and Heder’s routine, while Nick Swardson and William Fichtner head up the rest of the first-billed cast in what amounts to be stretched out cameos.

I am sure that this one will do pretty well at the box office, and encourage Ferrell and Heder to do more crappy comedies. It’s movies like this that will lead us toward a society as portrayed in Idiocracy. I can even admit that I enjoyed Idiocracy more than Blades Of Glory. And I thought Idiocracy sucked.