JOKES COME IN PAIRS WITH 'BLADES OF GLORY'.

Byline: Bob Strauss

Film Critic

'Blades of Glory" does OK with its single-note premise. It's neither as uproarious nor as ... hmm, erudite doesn't seem like the right word, but I think it is ... as Will Ferrell's last sports comedy, "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." That one lampooned huge swaths of low and higher American culture. "Blades" pretty much keeps to its own little world.

Championship figure skating is automatically satire-ready, so a good bunch of laughs were assured from the start. Just add some exaggeration to most aspects of the sport and, voila, comedy.

Where, really, to start? The costumes are embarrassing, the physical humor never quits and the characters, one-dimensional as they all are, are amusing enough egomaniacs. Especially the two who work that main premise until only the thinnest coating of it is left to glide on.

Ferrell is all boneheaded bluster as ultra-macho champ Chazz Michael Michaels. Flashy and aggressive, he works the ice like a heavyset Steven Tyler trying too hard to impress the first five rows of groupies.

His rival is artistic, sheltered Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder), who's trained his whole life to be the ultimate gold medalist and wears peacock-inspired skating suits.

When they tie at a major meet, Chazz and Jimmy get into a fight and are banned from competitive skating for life. After a few years of torment in the real world, they're brought back together by the slightly psycho Coach (Craig T. Nelson, enjoyably subverting his TV image). He's discovered that they can compete again, but only as a pair.

A pair of skate-dancing guys -- and I thought "300" the gayest non-gay movie I'd see this year. Of course, Chazz and Jimmy have to get over their mutual hatred before any of this will work. Think we might have a buddy film at some point here?

Just as predictably, there's an evil other team, a brother-and-sister act played by husband-and-wife funny people Will Arnett and Amy Poehler. They dress goofy, too; I would've liked to have seen more of their JFK and Marilyn routine. But mostly they provide cartoon villainy. Jenna Fischer, who plays the downtrodden Pam on "The Office," is a bit underused as the bad couple's nice, non-skating sister. Nevertheless, she gets some really good burlesque bits.

Most of the movie's best moments happen on skates. And not just in arenas or at the boys' training rink, where they practice many painful moves and a trick that almost always ends in decapitation. There's also a clever chase through Montreal that slows to barely a crawl whenever it moves off ice.

The directors are Geico Caveman commercial veterans Will Speck and Josh Gordon. They know when to let the actors just do their comic things, when to send in the stunt skaters and certainly what looks funny on blades. But it is their first feature, and they haven't quite managed to make "Blades of Glory" feel that different from most commercial Hollywood comedies -- even with all that help from the sport itself.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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BLADES OF GLORY - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: crude humor, language, violence, substance abuse)

Starring: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, Jenna Fischer, Craig T. Nelson.

Director: Will Speck and Josh Gordon.

Running time: 1 hr. 33 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: This film, about the first all-male championship skating team, is really a good one-joke movie, but it never really transcends its limited premise.

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Photo:

The skating team played by Jon Heder, left, and Will Ferrell, right, share a moment with real-life Olympic figure skater Scott Hamilton in "Blades of Glory."