Skate-Lander

As I wait to get out of JetBlue hell (I told ya, this whole delay thing at JB is bigger than the awful snow story), I'm hoping I can quick-post a review of at least one of the things I saw tonight.

As a kid, in junior high, the big place to go was Skate-Land, if you really with it.  This was during the five minutes that roller-skating came back in dring the late seventies, as embarrassing as it sounds, and a lot of Gloria Vanderbilt and Sasson jeans matched with "feathered" hairdos were paraded around... and that was just the boys (ba-dum-bum).  I find a lot of folks my age remember all of this fondly and with a little mortification - your pre-teen past is like that - but to say that all of the era, from its goofy music to its dopey looks to its weird zeitgeist of laid back California therapized talk, has been driving film comedy the past ten years or so is an understatement.

Which as good a place as any to start making sense of Blades of Glory, the extremely silly film about ice skating from the Stiller-Ferrell-etal axis.

It strikes me there are like 3 or 4 serious comedy axes spinning right now (not counting the ethinic comedies of folks like Cedric, Ice Cube and the Wayans for the moment) - the Farrelly Brothers, the Best in Show/For Your Consideration troupe, and the Ben Stiller and feriends group.  The latter has been a string of Will Ferrell, Wilson brothers, Stiller, and a few other lead males sorting out their midlife crises with an eye toward satirizing the late seventies in spirit or in actuality (Anchorman).

Blades is supposed to be modern, but it feels like a throwback - never more so than when its "Skate Federation" Board is comprised of Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hammill, Brian Boitano and Nancy Kerrigan.  Though some want to put it as being of a piece with Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory feels more like Zoolander on skates - a profession where even the straightest guy seems gay, and our semi-butch hero (Stiller as Zoolander, Ferrell here) is paired with a fey blonde dude who speaks pure hippie dippy (Owen Wilson then, Jon Heder here).

The ostensible story is that Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Heder get into fight when they tie for a gold at the "World Winter Games" (i.e. the Olympics), and get into a fight that embarrasses them and the sport.  Banned from competing in Male singles, the two contrive to get around the ban by skating as a pair.  Haha - two guys skating in the guy/girl roles... get it??? GET IT???

Whatever gender and masculinity issues Stiller et al are trying to work out here are still unresolved; there's a lot of inappropriate touching and "ew gross" swipes at seeming effeminate/weak, but there's also a sly, gentle sweetness to the proceedings (driven by Heder's scene-stealing off kilter approach, much like Wilson's in Zoolander) that undercuts a current of real discomfort and sublimated anger at gay-seeming.   It's times like this when antigay humor seems like the last, desperate refuge of comedians (especially male ones) who feel besieged from all sides.  We can't do women or blacks... but we can still make fun of gays!

All of which gives Blades a rather tired, "seen it" quality that it just can't shake - the over the top costumes, the fey dance moves, the elaborate overdone hair all feel overly familiar.  And the film is chock full of characters with little weirdnesses that pop up only to drift away, not fully explored - this is especially true of the skating team played by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, such gifted comedians that they spin thin, underwritten roles into comic genius, but without shaping, things get lost... like the weird, incestuous vibe their brother-sister pairing gives off (the two are married in real life). 

In the end that's the problem with Blades of Glory - a reasonably interesting premise seems to have been left, limp and inert before it could be shaped into a fully formed script.  Part Xanadu, part Zoolander, and part The Cutting Edge (a film Jennifer and I both list as a prime guilty pleasure), Blades is never enough of anything to qualify as more than slight fluff, and with that, it may really be time to lay off the "look, these guys seem effeminate... that must be funny" approach to comedies. It sure feels that way.

Comments

[Jennifer]

I know it isn't the main point here but since you brought it up, I'm going (proudly) tell you that I had a roller-skating Sweet-16 because it was the hottest thing to do in those days and I started a trend in my high school. And frankly I am still thrilled with it. :) But I am not ready to tell you what I wore. :)