Customer Reviews

Blades of Glory (Full Screen Edition)

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(57)
3 star:		(39)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

This has got to be one of the funniest movies that I have ever seen. I laughed so hard that I walked out of this movie feeling as if I had done 200 crunches. There were very few low points in which the humor died down. Most of the time I was in tears, laughing hysterically.

The story is about 2 male skaters that are extremely competitive. Their scores were tied and they both shared the Gold medal spot for a brief moment. They began fighting which resulted in their removal from the men's single ice skating competitions for the rest of their lives. After failing to achieve any sort of happiness with odd jobs (Ferrell ends up skating for a children's ice show and Heder ends up working for an ice skating shop)they agree to skate together in the couple's skating competitions.

Ferrell plays a sex addicted, egotistical guy who seems to be very low on the IQ scale. Heder plays a soft, effeminate guy who has lived a very priviledged life (until he gets kicked out of men's skating and his adoptive father disowns him). The two personalities clash to no end.

My husband and I truly enjoyed this show. There are a lot of sexual references made in the movie but it's used in a hilarious way. I wouldn't recommend younger children watching the movie simply because of the references.

When going in, my expectations were neither high nor low. I guess I figured that, to use Will Ferrell movies as my metrics, it could not possibly be as good as Anchorman but it had to be better than Talladega Nights (Yes, Talladega Nights was THAT bad).

Sidenote: It's true. I basically set two extremes and figured it would fall in between. If you didn't happen to catch my common sense approach and think me a genius, you have fantastic taste in geniuses.

Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) is the by-the-book, media-darling for the sport of figure skating. Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) is the exact opposite, though his bad-boy, sex-object image still allows him to post scores comparable to those of MacElroy. One day they end up in a fight that gets them banned from competition until they come across a loophole. They can compete again, but under the circumstances they must compete in pairs...together. Basically, like Napoleon Dynamite, if you are looking for a plot to this movie you'll never find one. If you want a movie with a decent balance of physical comedy and Will Ferrell making crude jokes, Blades of Glory may surprise you.

As long as you take the movie at face value and remember that you are not seeing a movie that is geared towards providing any entertainment other than cheap laughs for dirty jokes, this is a movie you should enjoy. Any time you try to go beyond that and search for something more you will be disappointed.

If I may be so bold, it might have been the worst career move ever for Jon Heder to use his own voice in his role as the title character in the love-it-or-hate-it comedy Napoleon Dynamite. The popularity he gained by his part in that movie has given him new opportunities, but they have been small parts because, well, when Jon Heder is in a movie, you have Napoleon Dynamite in that movie. He may continue to fight the up-hill battle of shrugging that stigma, or he can accept his fate. Blades of Glory may have been the first step towards that acceptance. Rather than trying to play support in a cheesy RomCom, he took a "starring" role as the patsy in a slapstick comedy. I can describe his character by saying that he is a tortured soul who was adopted by a billionnaire sports fan who gives him every advantage to succeed in the sport of figure skating, but it is probably easier to put it in terms which are a little easier to understand: In Blades of Glory, Jon Heder is the butt of just about every joke. As that guy, Heder succeeds.

I never got hooked on "Arrested Development," but since its demise Will Arnett's name has popped up more and more. I expected that his part in Blades of Glory would be bigger than it was, but it was certainly big enough to see why his popularity is rising.

As long as Will Ferrell makes a movie like this every few years, I will forgive him for however many attempts he wants to make to break into "serious" roles. A few of his comedic roles since Anchorman have seemed forced. In Blades of Glory, like in Anchorman, Ferrell seemed really at home in the character. It was a part that just let him do what he does best. Maybe what I am saying is that when Will Ferrell is womanizing, it makes me laugh hysterically.

I already liked Will Ferrell and Jon Heder before seeing this movie, but now I'm an even bigger fan. This buddy movie satirizing the championship ice skating world features gorgeous costumes, breathtaking choreography, cameo appearances from all your favorite skaters, really silky hair, bad kissing, and more gender busting sight gags than you can shake a skate at. I can't wait to get it on DVD just to watch the gag reel.

I also find Will Ferrell a bit hit or miss. When he's on, he's on and when he's off it can be painful to watch. With this movie, though, he really hit the mark. It's chock full of silliness and sight gags that make watching it a lot of fun. There is some very crude humor and some gross-out moments but I thought Ferrell was rather more restrained than he sometimes is and that certainly worked to the advantage of this movie. The character in this movie is more or less interchangeable with most Ferrell characters but that's not the point. The point is the sheer silliness of the plot, the over the top events, and the hilarity of watching skating star after skating star make often surprising cameo appearances.

Jon Heder is really wonderful in this movie. Where Ferrell is pure silliness, Heder is good at creating some nuance in his characters. Though his characters tend to be spacey and weird, he does a good job of making them somewhat real. He has a good sense for when understatement can do a great deal more than something very overt and obvious. I think he is a great talent and look forward to seeing more of him.

As far as slapstick comedies go, this one is something of a gem and is worth watching solely for the hilariously silly skating routine at the end of the movie. Ferrell and Heder make a great duo and I'd like to see them do another movie together.

I expected Blades of Glory to be fairly stupid without much maturity, and that's precisely what I got. Except I was surprisingly entertained by witty, dirty, and sometimes both witty and dirty, one-liners. You're not going to get a cinematic masterpiece here, but you will get a side of figure skating you've never seen before.

Will Ferrell is once again cocky, selfish, rude, and witty. Take Ron Burgundy's personality, Ricky Bobby's intelligence (or lack thereof), lace up some skates, and you have Chazz Michael Michaels. Jon Heder (Jimmy MacElroy) doesn't take away from Ferrell's presence, and even gives a presence of his own by standing his ground and going after a young lady. Jimmy has a bit of competition with Chazz on the ice, and even though Chazz "is figure skating," he keeps his pride. The two clashing skaters form a duet and show everyone what "twin dongs" can do.

Will Ferrell springboards off the success of Talladega Nights and lampoons another niche sport in Blades of Glory, a satire of figure skating. Although his character is more akin to his self absorbed and perverse Ron Burgundy, the film relies on the same formula that succeeded in his Nascar film, as joke after joke is leveled at the sport most of us don`t quite "get". The plot is full of one movie cliché after another, everything from a romance ruined when one party misinterprets a precarious situation to a breakneck chase to reach the arena in time to compete, but as long as you understand going in what to expect, this is a solid Will Ferrell film.

Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) and Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) are ice skating champions until they tie for first place one day and get into a fight on the podium. They get banned for life from figure skating and wind up doing regular Joe-jobs. Chazz, a self-proclaimed sex-addict, gets gigs as a mascot on ice while Jimmy, the sensitive one, works as a clerk at a skate shop. It's only when one of Jimmy's obsessed fans brings to his attention a loophole; he was banned from single events and there's nothing prohibiting him from skating in pairs. He needs a partner and his old coach (played to perfection by Craig T. Nelson) thinks Chazz and Jimmy would make a great pair. Thus begins the road to the figure skating championship in pairs featuring two men together for the first time.

An overall very funny film, more so than I expected. I'm a huge fan of Ferrell, not so much of Heder, but they had good chemistry together and their two different styles complemented each other quite well. Even if a few of the jokes fall flat, most of them are hilarious and the situations they find themselves in are so preposterous that you can't help but laugh. I was also impressed by the actors' skating abilities; they had to skate quite a bit (the acrobatics might have been done by stunt doubles but they still had to skate here and there) and they made it look easy. The supporting cast was comprised of regular Frat Pack members and friends such as Luke Wilson, Jenna Fischer, and Romany Malco. They all brought their funny lines to the part. Real-life skating champions also made their appearances; Brian Boitano, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, Nancy Kerrigan all had cameo roles, to name a few. The final part of the film was shot and takes place in my hometown of Montreal so I had a good time recognizing the various locations and venues.

Not as funny as other Ferrell classics like Old School, Night at the Roxbury, or Anchorman, but still worth the price of admission. More like "it's so silly it's funny" kind of humor. Fans of Ferrell and/or Heder shouldn't be disappointed.

Classic Will Ferrell. If you're a Will Ferrell fan you'll love it. If you're not a Will Ferrell fan you'll really like it.

Movie - 4.5

I've always been a fan of Will Ferrell. His juvenile hijinks, potty-mouth humor, and physical mannerisms are something I've come to enjoy over the course of his career, and not even so much during his SNL stint, but from his work in Anchorman on up. Meanwhile, Jon Heder certainly made his mark in comedy with his portrayal of the socially awkward and quirky Napoleon Dynamite, something of a surprising low-budget oddity that probably caught a lot of other people off guard as well. Put these two together in a movie produced by, you guessed it, Ben Stiller, and you've got a very silly and over-the-top sports comedy. Like a certain other Ben Stiller film about the comedic sports underdog story (Dodgeball), Blades of Glory is another mishmash of elements that is meant to, first and foremost, entertain, but also give some kind of weird, outlandish version of inspiration at the same time. Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) are figure skating's top two stars. Skills-wise, they're the best at what they do, but couldn't be more opposite from one another in terms of personality. Hating each others' guts and being forced to share Olympic gold, they get into a scuffle during the awards ceremony and are banned for life from singles skating. But upon an urging by MacElroy's creepiest and most obsessed fan, Hector (Nick Swardson), a loophole is found in the rules saying MacElroy can still compete in doubles. Predictably, as if you couldn't tell by the cover, MacElroy and Michaels become male doubles skating partners and attempt to achieve gold once again. If you know Will Ferrell's style of comedy and like it, then there's not much else to be said. The film is raunchy, silly, quirky, and not all that high-brow outside of a delightful performance by Jenna Fischer (who looked surprisingly hot in lingerie). Will Arnett and Amy Poehler co-star (with Fischer) as the opposing team, and Craig T. Nelson, as you can guess, plays Ferrell and Heder's coach.

Video - 4.5

Having watched quite a few different types of genres on BD lately (lots of comedy, but the occasional drama and action flick), I have to say I'm surprised at the level of picture quality presented in a lot of the comedies I've seen, and Blades of Glory looks as glorious as its title implies. The color palette full of blues, whites, and shiny variations of the two, with a splash of red, looks stunning. From the very outset of the opening sequence where the two skaters are competing against one another at the Olympics, there's a very nice sense of pop to the overall picture. The details in their costumes, the clarity of the crowd, and the flawless digital removal of all the wiring looks excellent, which to me is kind of shocking for a simple comedy movie. All the little sequins on Heder's peacock suit, the bright reds and oranges on Ferrell's fire suit, or their outer space and electro-laden lights on their space suits look remarkably clear and vibrant. Outside of competition, blacks and contrast handle especially well revealing shadows, lines, facial features, and overall image detail in a clear, almost lifelike manner. Again, it's all about the costuming. My favorite one outside of the skater suits was Jenna Fischer's lingerie. I thought she was kind of cute on The Office and all, but wow. That black nightie with the all the cleavage and the fishnet stalkings look great. Oh, and so does the quality of black levels within the costume itself. The only downside to the picture? Saturation tends to be a little low on the non-competition scenes reserving a lot of the film's lighting and shine for the glossier parts of the movie, but I never found it to be a huge problem. It does, however, knock the overall transfer down just a bit, but is a beauty to behold, regardless.

Audio - 4.5

Back in the day before Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA became the economical norm for disc space, there once was a codec called Uncompressed PCM. And while it took up a good deal of memory, it packed a wallop of a bit rate. Blades of Glory, for all its ridiculousness, got a mind-bottling presentation from Paramount/Dreamworks with an audio encode of 6.9Mbps, that's nearly twice the bit rate of Avatar. Strange for a sports comedy to get such royal treatment, I know, when so many other newly re-/released and catalog titles are still getting shafted with lossy Dolby Digital (*cough* Warner Brothers), but big thanks to the people at Paramount for giving Blades a very excellent aural presentation. My biggest surprise upon a few re-watches on my newly-equipped HT setup (new center, fronts, and sub added since then) is the amount of directionality and separation within the film's sound design. Something I've always liked about sports movies is the ambiance of crowd noise, and this track definitely didn't disappoint. Dialogue remains clear and centered, while the front sides and rears do a tremendous job of placing cheers, random fans voicing their support, and camera clicks all over the place. The score by Theodore Shapiro or what few instances there are of record label songs totally immerse you. Aerosmith's I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing and Queen's Flash are two great songs by two very great bands, and hearing them in lossless audio during the competitive events is a blast every time. The only downside, or rather the only elements not truly taken advantage of, are the LFEs. While there is some slight bass from the music, your sub never really gets a workout until the very last scene with some fireworks and Ferrell blasting fire into the camera. But all in all, the sound couldn't be any better.

Extras - 3.5

There aren't a whole lot of extras, but a good majority of them are in HD and pretty entertaining for what they're worth. There's a making-of, a segment for the skate choreography, one for costuming, various interviews with cast and crew, deleted scenes, alternate takes, and a trailer that amount to a little over an hour in total duration. One of the highlights for me was the making-of, in which Ferrell, Heder, Fischer, Stiller, and the two directors are very candid and seriously funny (as in serious, yet jocular) about how the movie came about, what they hoped to "achieve" by making it, and their experiences in filming it. My second favorite would have to be the interview with Arnett and Poehler, I liked them for what little exposure I had to their SNL days, but I've seen or heard them in a few movies since then and like their chemistry and overall demeanor a lot. Lastly, my favorite extra is the unscripted Moviefone Q&A between Ferrell, Heder, and Arnett. The three get along very well, don't take the interview too seriously, and offer some pretty funny responses to the questions they get asked. My one disappointment in this package, however, is the lack of a commentary. Had those three taken the time to sit down, or maybe if a combination of them were in the booth with Stiller, Poehler, Nelson, Fischer, Swardson (maybe in-character as Hector) or either of the directors, I think this would've made for a great, great listen to compliment the zaniness of the film itself. It's a darn shame nothing was made, but there's still a good amount of extras here that fans would probably get a kick out of.

Overall - 4.5

Blades of Glory is crazy and over-the-top. It's a story about male pairs figure skating with raunchy humor, sexual references, a balanced dose of slapstick, and even a little wordplay here and there. As ridiculous as the premise seems, it's also a movie in the care of some really good comedic actors in Ferrell, Heder, Fischer, Arnett, and Poehler, all of who give great deliveries and possess excellent chemistry with one another. With near-reference picture and sound and a slightly underwhelming, but still entertaining, set of extras, Blades of Glory comes highly recommended. Boom!

BLADES OF GLORY, as anyone knows, is pure Will Ferrell schtick. It's another zany role where Ferrell can be gross, pompous, self-indulgent, petulant, ludicrous, foolish, irritating, just plain silly, and way, way, over the top. In fact, Ferrell is getting so over the top in his performances one wonders if he isn't doing a tongue-in-cheek parody of. . .Will Ferrell.

Which is one reason why BLADES OF GLORY--a lame, nonsensical flick that should dissolve in its own goofiness--is so darn funny. We're never going to take Will Ferrell seriously, so why should this movie deserve any different consideration? A movie about a sport I wouldn't, in real life, walk across the street to watch allows Will Ferrell to run amuck, allows the cast to lob spoof after spoof of ribald double entendres. The result: pure comedic nirvana.

And it's not just Ferrell alone who makes this film uproariously funny. Heck, the entire cast cuts loose and has a blast. Jon Neder, Ferrell's sidekick, is effectively "Ah, shucks" nerdy; Craig T. Nelson can play an eccentric gung-ho motivator with the best of them; and villains Will Arnett and Amy Poehler hysterically push the envelope (their skating routine portraying JFK and Marilyn Monroe had me rolling on the floor). Fact is, there's not a weak link in this acting ensemble; yet another reason why this movie works so well.

The plot is lame. The ending is hokey and over the top. And in every scene silliness reigns supreme. But it doesn't matter: BLADES OF GLORY is a rib-tickling delight, compliments of Ferrell and cast. I haven't had this much fun since "Caddyshack."
--D. Mikels, Author, Walk-On