With Blades of Glory director Will Speck (Culture, Angry Boy) makes his feature film debut with comic star Will Ferrell leading a supporting cast of up and coming actors, and a long list of cameos.

This film tells the story of two competing figure skaters who are at the top of their respective games, Will Ferrell as Chazz Michael Michaels, and John Heder (Napoleon Dynamite, The Benchwarmers) as Jimmy MacElroy. The skaters are opposite personalities and hate each other as much as they are competitors. When the two compete in a skating championship final, and tie for the gold medal, a fight ensues on the medal stand which ends their careers. They move on with life and subsequently become “has-beens� but through a legal loop-hole and crazy circumstances the two reach a mutual, but tense agreement to become the first all male team of figure skaters in an effort to restart their careers.

This film might be better titled “A Disappointment, On Ice,� because Blades can unfortunately be easily summed up as simply another Will Ferrell movie.

John Heder gives us one more Napoleon-esque performance but trades love-able nerdiness with a perm for cheap gay jokes with a blonde wig. Jenna Fischer (‘Pam’ on NBC’s The Office, Employee of the Month) plays the love interest of the film but her character is as one-dimensional as the rest and in one especially regrettable scene stoops to letting herself be groped plainly on camera. Craig T. Nelson (Coach, The Family Stone) plays (ironically enough) the skating coach in this movie. Although being an established actor, he gets little screen time and gives us little with what time he does have. He’s the surly coach who’s down on his luck (anyone see The Mighty Ducks, or Cool Runnings?).

Blades includes cameos by real-life figure skating champions Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton, Dorothy Hamill, and others as well as comedian Andy Richter (Late Night with Conan O’Brian) and actor William Fichtner (Prison Break). This film also includes two forgettable performances by Amy Poehler (SNL) and Will Arnett (Arrested Development) who play sibling skating partners that are creepily sexual in everything they do and apparently a couple.

The film’s greatest disappointment is Ferrell himself. He gives us more of what we’ve already seen him do, with the same type of character (i.e. Old School, Anchorman, and Talladega Nights), only under a worse premise. His comedy in this film relies solely on being over-the-top and going further with crude and sexual humor than anyone expects. He delivers innuendo after innuendo in another shallow character that has become tired and worn from over-use. Gay jokes and sexual humor dominate his role and are akin to the jokes one hears in a 7th grade boy’s locker room. This film is low grade, and low intelligence, resulting in lower expectations of Ferrell. He’s capable of so much more (i.e. Stranger Than Fiction), why do the same thing all over again?

It’s hard to imagine recommending this film for any reason to any body at any time.

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