Walk Hard

I don't think I gave "Walk Hard" a fair shake.

I loved the first fifteen minutes, which I enjoyed while eating lunch. Then I started in on the laundry (with two you boys, I have a lot of laundry), and the simple act of folding and sorting took me out of the comedy headspace the film demanded.

Or maybe the movie just couldn't top, "It wasn't it fault!" "Not his fault? He cut him in half! With a machete!"

Even though the picture didn't raise many laughs after its first act, it did impress me with its music. Over the course of the feature, "Walk Hard" showcased perhaps every major genre of music to get airplay in America in the last fifty years. And the title song itself? Y'know, it's catchy. In fact, I've been humming it for days.

So, "Walk Hard." There it is. Give it your full attention, and it may pay off for you. It's hard for me to say.

Blades of Glory

The Will Ferrell figure skating comedy BLADES OF GLORY, which could just have easily been entitled WILL FERRELL FIGURE SKATING COMEDY is intermittently funny, but it’s the kind of movie whose comedy comes from its situations, not its characters. That’s because the movie has no real characters, but rather characatures. There’s Ferrell as, essentially, Elvis Stojko and John Heder as Brian Boitano. When the two are banned from Men’s Singles competition, they do what Brian Boitano would do: they man up and start skating doubles.

That’s pretty much your movie, and it’s intermittently entertaining as long as you’re willing to go along with its central premise: that figure skating is ridiculous and that male figure skaters are pussies. That premise, and the gags BLADES OF GLORY milks from it, is pretty much all the movie has to offer. This would spell disaster if they’d cast anyone other than Ferrell at his schticky best, Heder in full mincing ninny mode, and (married) comic geniuses Will “Final Countdown” Arnett and Amy Poehler as their hilariously evil foils. (Aside: I’d never accept an invitation to the Arnett/Poehler house for dinner. I don’t think I could get out of there without peeing my pants with laughter.) This cast takes a paper-thin (and potentially offensive) premise and characters with less depth than an 8-yr-old’s poetry and, amazingly, makes them work. BLADES OF GLORY didn’t make me out-and-out guffaw, but it did keep me chuckling. That’s good enough for an in-flight movie, and that’s all I needed when I saw it.