Movie review - "Blades of Glory" (2007) ***1/2

The one genre Hollywood has improved in in recent years is comedy, due mostly to the work of the Frat Pack, or whatever they're called: Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, etc. This one has a $100 million concept: Will Ferrell and John Heder as Oscar and Felix contrasting ice skaters who team up and compete in doubles.
The standard sports movie template is followed, to wit - establish characters, give them trauma, team up, training montage (conflict interspersed with moments of working together), triumph, crisis to end second act, final triumph. Hey, this is a template because it works and it does here.
The great thing about comic sports movies is you can make fun of them but still take the benefit - when Heder and Ferrell do their routine to Aerosmith's 'I Wouldn't Change a Thing' its funny, and exciting.
There are some opportunities missed - they set up this great character, a billionaire who adopted Heder then dumped him when he was stripped off gold, but he disappears after the first 15 minutes; we only get to know one other pair of skaters (brilliant acting by both, esp the Arrested Development guy) when surely there was scope for satire with some other characters (esp when Ferrell talks about some of his ex girlfriends -you think they'll show up but they don't); they set up the fact both Ferrell and the girl opposing skater have similar dirty minds but this isn't paid off; and also it's a bit yucky to have the nice girl try to seduce Ferrell prior to the big match (she doesn't go through with it and they try to take the sting out of it by having them blackmail her, etc but its still a bit yucky - Heder could still have thought she slept with Ferrell by some other means i.e. maybe her sister pretended to be her, without actually her agreeing).
But there's lots of good stuff: choice of music (Flash Gordon for the final song!), Craig T Nelson having Matt Damon's photo on his fridge (it seems as though the filmmakers wanted to compensate for making Heder's character straight by"coding" Nelson as gay), some classic lines (eg Ferrell on being nine with a 35 year old girlfriend), the skating action (both actors can skate quite well), the performance. And it's good fun.