Movie review: Ferrell, Heder bask in ‘Blades of Glory’

There are few sports that can match the graceful sensuality and poise of a male/female figure skating team performing a seemingly back-breaking maneuver on an ice rink in front of thousands of anxious fans.

When you replace the man and woman with Will Ferrell (“Anchorman”) and John Heder (“Napoleon Dynamite”), the results aren’t quite as pretty.

Nonetheless, the combination is indeed side-splittingly hilarious.

The new Ferrell and Heder vehicle, “Blades of Glory,” is the kind of dumb comedy that works because of skillful comedic acting, a genuinely funny script and deft comic gimmicks that work because of said acting and visual panache. The comedy just clicks here.

Imagine Ferrell as a hilarious amalgam of Michael Flatley from Lord of the Dance, Slash from Guns N Roses and a creepy sex offender, and you have his latest creation: figure skater Chazz Michael Michaels, or as the color commentator says “sex on ice.”

Well, more like sleaze on ice, but that’s Ferrell’s charm here.

Then there’s Heder’s skater, Jimmy MacElroy, rocking the blonde man’s ’fro in his perhaps his most aptly cast role since “Dynamite.”

Both men excel at playing man-children: Heder the whiny weakling and Ferrell the testosterone-filled blowhard. This yin and yang of their cinematic personas work magic on the movie’s concept. The computer digital effects seamlessly superimpose the actor’s faces on real figure skaters performing with Michaels’ style full of improvisational bravado and MacElroy’s effeminate poise.

When both skaters tie for gold at the men’s singles division international competition, their egos get the best of them and they disgrace themselves after a Jerry Springer-style tussle on the winners podium. Soon after, thanks to a panel of judges that includes Nancy Kerrigan and Brian Boitano, they’re banned from men’s singles for life.

Thus setting up the unlikely premise that Michaels and MacElroy compete as a pair in the pairs division because “nowhere in the rules does it say two men can’t compete in the pairs division” (Obviously, this loophole is a cinematic invention).

So MacElroy’s coach, masterfully played by Craig T. Nelson, agrees to train the unlikely duo, echoing the mismatched pairings of countless buddy comedies. But the matching of Heder and Ferrell is inspired comic gold. Nelson works here because he plays the role straight as if he were in a drama.

The villains in the film are played by Amy Poehler (“Saturday Night Live”) and her real-life husband, Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”), who play the evil pairs brother-sister figure skating team of Franz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg. There’s a funny subplot involving their earnest and good-natured younger sister Katie Van Waldenberg (Jenna Fischer from “The Office”) who Franz and Fairchild make work for them out of guilt.

Katie and Jimmy fall in love and there’s a hilarious scene where the innocence of Heder and Fischer’s virginal screen presence is corrupted by the filth of dirty sex talk as they get the wrong kind of advice from Ferrell, Arnett and Poehler’s characters.

I also liked the musical score here. There’s a scene where Michaels, a sex addict, is explaining the tattoos on his back which represent past romantic conquests, which involve Oksana Baiul and Michelle Kwan, and each of Ferrell’s descriptions of past forbidden love has its own distinct musical leitmotif, like what the composer Serge Prokofiev does in his “Peter and the Wolf.” Speaking of beautiful female figure skaters, there’s a scene near the end of the film involving a cameo with Sasha Cohen that was just plain wrong, and I mean that in a good way.

“Blades of Glory” is also a sort of hilarious sendup of the 1992 Cinemax standard (and guilty pleasure) “The Cutting Edge,” starring D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly, where the pairs skaters in that movie had to nail a seemingly “impossible” maneuver to win the gold. Witness the disturbingly funny “Iron Lotus” North Korea gag in this film. I never knew a snuff film could be so achingly funny.

“Blades of Glory” can be categorized among the kind of movies that Ben Stiller and Rob Schneider seem to keep churning out, but those actors always try too hard and their high concept pictures reek of phoniness. Ferrell and Heder, though, handle the material effortlessly as if the roles and concept were second nature. I had a good time at “Blades of Glory” and so did the audience I saw it with. Heder and Ferrell are a good comedic team and I imagine future cinematic pairings of the two.

(Three and a half stars out of 4.)

Neil Nisperos can be reached at 737-1059 or nnisperos@lompoc record.com.