As the old saying goes, see one Will Ferrell movie and you’ve seen them all. Blades of Glory is a hilarious sports comedy, this time revolving around ice skating. Just enough over-the-top to be funny, it’s one of those movies that will put you in a good mood. I know that a lot of people don’t like Will Ferrell and his style of comedy but I have to say that I do. The movie we’re talking about today belongs to his “sports trilogy” along with Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (NASCAR) and Semi-Pro (NBA). And it’s the best of the bunch. Mostly because, apart from Will, we also have Jon Heder who gave one hell of a performance.
You might remember him as that kid from Napoleon Dynamite. Both he and Will learned how to ice skate specifically for this movie. Actually, the entire cast of Blades of Glory did a terrific job. In supporting roles, we have Amy Poehler and Will Arnett along with Jenna Fischer. Amy and Will were married at the time of the shoot and their costumes are simply hilarious. It was also cool to see Jenna outside of The Office, playing a different character. To get back to Hader for a bit, did you know that he speaks Japanese? Yeah, neither did I but apparently he spent two years in Japan as a Mormon missionary, something I also didn’t know.
Moving on, the story parodies all those popular sports movies complete with inspirational and sometimes tragic backstories. It’s not a straight-up parody but it’s damn near close. We will be following two professional ice skaters and archenemies, Chazz and Jimmy. While Jimmy is this perfect skater using science to increase his performance, Chazz is the bad boy of ice skating. However, both of them will be banned after a fight they caused during an award ceremony. Desperate to skate again, they find a loophole that enables them to compete again but as partners, not enemies.
You can instantly see how the main story has the classic sports movie arch. It’s just mwah perfect. On top of that, Blades of Glory highlights just how bizarre ice skating is to an average sports fan. I mean, you can say that about pretty much every sport but the rules here are somewhat different. Especially when you realize just how seriously people are taking these competitions. To be perfectly clear, nor am I nor is this movie making fun of ice skating. If nothing else, it’s making it more popular. Just like I, Tonya starring Margot Robbie did back in 2017.
Blades of Glory is a great movie. It’s funny, fast-paced, and entertaining also featuring a phenomenal cast. The humor is just enough raunchy to keep things spicy while most of the jokes are quite mainstream. As you can already guess, there will be also a lot of gags and physical humor. Blades of Glory also references a couple of real events. The character of Chazz and his ice skating style is based on real-life figure skater Elvis Stojko. The controversy with the equal number of points is actually related to the very real 2002 Winter Olympics figure skating scandal. Speaking of scandals, Chazz and Jimmy’s rivals plan to attack them “below the knee and above the ankle”.
An almost exactly the same attack really happened to figure skater Nancy Kerrigan who also appears briefly in the movie. I, Tonya starring Margot Robbie actually features this incident. Finally, the peacock costume, worn by Hader’s character Jimmy, is awfully similar to Johnny Weir’s swan costume he wore during the 2006 Winter Olympics. Everything I’ve just told you might be fun to read but nothing compares to the type of atmosphere this movie generates. It will actually make you check out the rest of Will Ferrell’s filmography. I recommend you start with Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, another hilarious oddity from 2020.
Director: Josh Gordon, Will Speck
Writers: Craig Cox, Jeff Cox, Busy Philipps
Cast: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer, Craig T. Nelson, William Fichtner
Fun Facts: Ben Stiller almost ended up playing one of the main characters before stepping down and serving as an executive producer for the movie. He was ultimately replaced with Jon Hader.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445934/
