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Blades of Glory

Will Ferrell's glory days are over

By PETER KEOUGH | March 29, 2007

2.0 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Blades of Glory.

Will Ferrell plays a redneck star athlete who’s dumb and adored and loses his trousers a lot and meets his match in an effete competitor. It worked in Talladega Nights, but it doesn’t work here. Jon Heder, who plays prima donna superstar skater Jimmy McElroy, is no Sacha Baron Cohen, or even a Sasha Cohen (who appears as herself). And if you’re going to make a movie about the first male/male pair-figure-skating team, you have to make at least a few jokes about the gay thing, if not include it as a subtext, as Talladega Nights did with re- state politics and attitudes. First-time feature directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck pass on such sophisticated maneuvers, however, and rather than let the conflict between Farrell’s macho Chazz and Heder’s epicene Jimmy play out, they end it for no reason and with no resolution and resort instead to standard buddy-movie conventions. No guts and no glory, and not much in the way of comedy, either.

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