The latest Will Ferrell movie is exactly what you'd expect it to be, said S. James Snyder in The New York Sun. It won't revolutionize the comedy business, but with its familiar slapstick laughs, Blades of Glory is sure to brighten your weekend. The movie does to the world of figure skating 'œwhat Zoolander did to modeling or what Dodgeball did to, well, dodgeball.' Will Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels, a macho figure skater whose female fans throw panties onto the ice. Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) is Jimmy MacElroy, a flamboyant skater with an overstyled puff of blond hair. When they tie for a championship, the ensuing brawl gets them both banned for life. The only way back into the game is to enter as a pair, making Michaels and MacElroy the first-ever same-sex figure skating team. 'œIt sounds formulaic, but it's formula done right,' said Eleanor Ringel-Gillespie in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The skating performances are beyond hilarious, and the villains, played by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, deserve their own movie. But we've seen all this before, said Rene Rodriguez in The Miami Herald. Shouldn't audiences be tired of homophobic humor and Ferrell's recycled characters? Blades of Glory 'œis yet another entry in the increasingly crowded genre of half-baked, lazy comedies' that offer plot as nothing more than a framework in which actors can goof off.
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