Blades of Glory

Review in a Hurry:  Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) and Will Ferrell (almost every funny comedy of the past five years) star as rival figure skaters, banned from singles competition, who find a loophole that allows them to compete as a pairs team. Fine supporting cast and more or less entertaining, just not amusing enough to be gloriously funny.

The Bigger Picture:  Ferrell's primary skill as a comedian may be lowering expectations and then exceeding them. The team behind Blades of Glory gets the first part right—it's basically Ferrell and Heder doing The Odd Couple on Ice, and hang the high concept. But unlike Anchorman or Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory isn't any better than it should be.

Competitive figure skating seems like it ought to be a rich vein, comedically speaking, but the on-ice portions of Blades of Glory are just barely skating by, recycling the obvious jokes over and over again. One man's face in another man's crotch: arguably funny.

Ten repetitions later: getting a little old.

The competition sequences, meanwhile, betray a weak understanding of the subject—the writers obviously know what their audience thinks of figure skating, but not much else.

Off the ice, though, Blades of Glory is in high form. An erstwhile romance between fussy prodigy Heder and a competitor's browbeaten assistant (The Office's Jenna Fischer) is both sweet and sly, and though Ferrell is recycling old characters, his ability to spout non sequiturs and nifty malapropisms keeps his schtick on its feet.

And while Will Arnett and Amy Poehler (as a scheming brother-sister couples team) don't steal every scene they're in, they definitely demonstrate the value of commitment to a bit.

All this talent gives Blades Of Glory high technical marks, but it's the presentation that's less than Olympic.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  If America's Funniest Home Videos is your kind of thing, Blades Of Glory is your Movie of the Year. If you take offense at either cabaret-style homoeroticism or innate homophobia, well, let's just say it isn't.