mollflanders

Crinkling up, sweetheart—this is a dilly of a noir, with one of the most fearsome and iconic screen moments in it, so let’s start right there, shall we? Richard Widmark, looking like a skeletal Cheshire cat, plays the vicious Tommy Udo, a ropy satirize looking to locate a throngs. In the final analysis on the street is that a geezer called Rizzo has ratted him out, so Tommy pays a assail, discovery Rizzo’s closets empty, and neutral his wheelchair-bound mother instead, professing ignorance as to her boy’s whereabouts. So what does Tommy do to faithful some small measure of avenge in the moment? He sends the old lady down a brace of flights of the walkup, wheelchair and all, cackling as she falls all the modus operandi down.

It’s a chilling and worthy form, and in some ways is the paradigmatic Widmark moment—his gallery of bad guys all maintain their roots in the Tommy Udo archetype. And however this is a bit of a nasty motion picture, it’s not so nasty as to draw up Tommy our exemplar. That would be Scratch Bianco, an ex-con who can’t restrain a begin, pressed back into a life of crime—when a jewelry heist goes bad, Notch finds himself deny in the clink. The D.A. dangles a deal—if Nick will persuade up the names of his compadres, he can diminished down on his sentence. But Nick’s no squealer, and intends to do his dilly-dally like a man—that is, until his wife sticks her head in the oven, leaving their two little ones daughters orphaned. Now Nick is ready to talk, despite the opinion from his Rabble counselor-at-law, and it’s his testimony that has Tommy Udo on the ultimately.

An foot in the door title card announces that all of the shooting was done on fingers on, and the movie has a streetwise sensibility—a lot of that also comes from Victor Polished as Nick. Mature alternately resembles Jerry Orbach, Chris Noth and Dean Martin—he’s not a fantastically good actor, but ably carries this movie along on his wholesale and well-tailored shoulders. Director Henry Hathaway gets lots of nice hopped from his unreserved cast, in fact—Brian Donlevy is terrific as the crafty but belief district attorney, making this performance character of the flip side of the amoral huckster he plays as the nickname character in The Flagrant McGinty, and one of his aides is played by a lanky prepubescent Karl Malden. Nick strikes up a jailhouse romance with Nettie, his daughters’ onetime babysitter, played by Coleen Gray, who’s competent to pull this elsewhere without seeming daffy or simpering—her distinction also provides occasional narration by reason of us, which tends to be much more moral than the narrative playing into the open.

The story moves inexorably post to the necessary confrontation between Tommy and Blemish, and the last reels of the film are taut with suspense—you can see why, some fifty years later, somebody got the bright idea to remake this movie, though the newer version lacks the crispness of the primordial, in large measure, I suspect, due to the skilled script here by Ben Hecht. (This movie was produced a year after Notorious, which Hecht wrote as vigorous.) Hathaway loves the procedural stuff, but doesn’t let it cotton on to a leave in the way of his chronicling, and the occur is this terrifically tense piece of work.

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This title was featured in a tribute to

Albert Victor Adamson

I SPIT ON YOUR CORPSE (1974, 91 minutes): Originally conceived as Girls for Rent — a thematic sequel to Women for Sale — this film roared from script to screen in just 60 days. Pornstar Georgina Spelvin stars as Sandra, a ruthless con busted out of a Mexican prison by the syndicate to murder a politician who’s outlived his usefulness. She dupes the geezer’s mistress into poisoning him mid-diddle. Horrified by what’s happened, Donna (the oh-so gorgeous Susan McIve) skedaddles for Mexico in her Pinto. She’s pursued into the desert by Sandra and fellow hit-gal Erica (Rosalind Miles) who must silence the no longer trustworthy witness. We slide into very rewarding cat-and-mouse territory, with the killers just steps behind lovely Donna while she endures further torments like having her car stolen and being kidnapped by rednecks. Spelvin’s character is truly sadistic, which is shockingly evidenced in a scene toward the end of the flick where she brutally redefines coitus interruptus.

Notables: Eight breasts. Eight corpses. Cat fighting. Topless kung fu. Multiple diddling. Star gazing. Car chase with explosion. Multiple foot chases.

Quotables: Dirty ol’ H.R. (Robert Livingston) wants Donna to, ahem, date his boy, “You’ve been around lady. I can tell. After all, what’s one more loaf in the oven?” Sandra quizzes Ben on the facts of life, “Don’t you know what you’ve got down there in those pants, honey?” Donna’s story overwhelms Chuck, “Murder and prostitution!? That’s a lot to lay on a guy!”

Time codes: Members of female chain gang attempt to scratch each other’s eyes out (6:15). Mikel James appears as the deep-tissue masseuse (15:38). Regina Carrol’s leggy cameo (20:46). Donna attempts to coax Ben into manhood (53:00). Sandra has better luck with the kid (1:08:30).

A Bluehawk Films shaping. Produced by Sally Rose. Directed, written by John Walsh.

Eddie Brodsky - Matt Ross

Lee Nicol - Calliope Thorne

Flicker Obregon - Kevin Carroll

Dr. Banarjee - Ramsey Faragallah

Elenka - Nina Shevaleva

Raphael - Jimmy Cummings

Joke of the new breed of indie romantic comedies, "Ed's Next Move" is a delightful, taken with first fade away with potent sleeper implied. Once again the trial and trauma of finding candidly weakness in the big city takes center condition. But writer-director John Walsh fills his victory feature with reasonably novelty and quirky characterization to set it separate from the deck package. Despite its modest budget and a cast of newcomers, the essence could see some unpretentious overdone play. But it's more likely to find an audience on videocassette and serve as a calling pasteboard for future projects.

Eddie (Matt Ross) has recently been dumped by his girlfriend, who's fed up with his anal retentive nature. So, he leaves the gentle life of rural Wisconsin for the hustle and bustle of New York City and a job doing genetic research on new strains of rice.

The transplanted dairy-country eccentric looks rather square and "normal" in this new environment. His roommate Ray (Kevin Carroll) tries at least to get him in the swing by taking him to parties. He finally connects — after several false starts — with Lee (Calliope Thorne), a member of a folk-singing quartet with an exceptionally perverse repertoire. They appear ideally suited. The big stumbling block is that she's involved with someone else.

Of course, it's soon apparent that her current relationship isn't exactly thriving. She's just too much of a nice girl to get involved with someone — no matter how nice he might be — until her present situation is resolved.

While the story is pretty standard boy-meets-girl stuff, Walsh's observation and depiction of the situation adopt some effective offbeat touches. He relives the breakup of Eddie's relationship by playing out the fateful exchange with two translators who provide the underlying meaning of the couple's words. At a particular low point of the young man's new life, Walsh injects a fanciful commercial message for the fictional org Nice Guys R Us.

All this is effected in a gentle, uncomplex fashion rather than employing razzle-dazzle technique. The filmmaker has a keen understanding of the need to avoid visual wizardry and emphasize the characters.

Ross has a natural charm and boyishness, combining classic traits with modern sensibilities. Thorne's role, more modern in its perspective, lends the story dynamism, and the performers' onscreen chemistry infuses the film with emotion.

The support cast is equally strong and colorful, including Carroll as a decidedly not-by-the-book skirt chaser and Nina Shevaleva as a sage deli operator who introduces the naif to such exotic culinary fare as blintzes.

"Ed's Next Move" is testament to the indie arena's facility to make simple human sagas with depth and humor.

Camera (color), Peter Nelson; editor, Pamela Martin; music, Ed's Redeeming Qualities; production design, Kristin Vallow; costume design, Maura Sircus; sound, Wim Tzouris; associate producer, Joshua Astrachan; assistant director, W. Ed Stephenson; casting, Susan Shopmaker. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (American Spectrum), Jan. 21, 1996. Running time: 86 MIN.

 

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Date in print: Mon., Jan. 29, 1996,

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- Mon., Jan. 29, 1996

After his father’s finish in a appalling car blunder, Kale (Shia LaBeouf) becomes withdrawn and angry - and a biff at his junior merry State school gets him a augur lower than drunk house detention. His mother, Julie (Carrie-Anne Moss), works night and day to support them, and the walls of his lodgings create to close in on Kale. He becomes a voyeur as his interests turn remote the windows of his suburban adroit in towards those of his neighbours, conspicuously dulcet amateur Ashley (Sarah Roemer) - and Mr Turner (David Morse) who Kale begins to suspect is a serial killer. With help from his school friend Ronnie (Aaron Yoo) and Ashley, Kale starts spying on Mr Turner, but the clues seem to evanesce and maybe Kale is just imagining things guardianship duress.

I almost liked

Eight Legged Freaks

. I tend to like creature
features that manage being atmospheric and creepy while still retaining
a sense of humor about themselves.


Mimic


and


Anaconda


are two good ones, and

Eight Legged Freaks

almost fits in amongst
them. Certainly I enjoyed a lot of it — maybe even most of it. But
it steers wrong in the final act when it shows too many people getting
mowed down by giant spiders. It's too much, too horrific. It's one thing
when a beastie takes out a few individuals: the early victims establish
the nature of the threat; later victims are either villains getting their
comeuppance or tragedies treated as such. But dozens upon dozens of
people die in

Eight Legged Freaks

all in the name of rousing
action. It's not personal. It's not even personal when characters we
know get eaten. This insensitivity grows increasingly wrong in tone,
culminating in the startlingly inappropriate final shots, when the survivors
crack corny jokes, unphased, it seems by the fact that the majority of the
residents of an entire town have just perished.

I want to be able to recommend

Eight Legged Freaks

, because so
much of the movie finds just the right balance between chills and camp.
For chills, there is a lot of reaching into dark places and never knowing
what's just around the corner or beyond the reach of the flashlight.
For camp, there are spider coughs and squeals, and a spider and a cat
fighting so violently in the walls of a house that body parts of both
become imprinted on the walls in relief. Yes, I want to be able to
recommend it, but I guess I'll settle for recommending it only to those
who enjoyed


Mimic


and


Anaconda


enough to want more.

Shadowheart full movie bluray

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Director Albert Lewin’s (”Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”/”The Moon
and Sixpence”) sterling adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel about a
handsome young Victorian aristocrat, Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield), in the
London of 1886, who remains eternally young after he makes a Faustian bargain
and sells his soul. His portrait ages and in its corrupted form bears the
ugly scars of his dissolute life, while in the eighteen years of the narrative
Dorian looks just as he did when he was 22 and posed for the portrait drawn
by Basil Hallward (Lowell Gilmore). The only thing that changes is his
innocent Tristan-like character of being a noble knight into a monstrous
cold-hearted narcissist who causes ill to those around him and even resorts
to committing murder by his own hands. 

The film’s pleasures revolve around the scintillating black-and-white
photography of Harry Stradling, earning him an Oscar, and the superb effortless
meanie performance by Hatfield that is matched by the skillful cynical
egomaniacal performance of George Sanders as the witty Lord Henry Wotton–brilliantly
tossing around epigrams in the sharp manner the actor has built his reputation
on. Lord Henry is the spooky friend of Wilde’s and the artist, who is living
only for his selfish pleasures– in actuality Lord Henry is the alter ego
of Wilde and speaks for him throughout. Moyna MacGill, the real-life mother
of Angela Lansbury, has a small role as the Duchess. 

The film opens as Lord Henry barges in on Basil putting the finishing
touches on his portrait of the handsome and noble Dorian. The artist is
so pleased with his work that he refuses to sell it or put it on exhibit,
but presents it to Dorian as a gift. Basil says there was something mystical
about that painting–it had a life of its own. After signing the painting,
along with the artist’s young niece Gladys signing it with a G, it hangs
in Dorian’s house at Mayfair. Before he leaves, Lord Henry fills the young
man’s head with his cynical views of life such as the bon mot “To yield
to temptation is the only way to get rid of it.” The comment that Lord
Henry expands on that profoundly affects the young man centers around the
belief that “One who loses youth, loses everything.” Lord Henry goes on
to say “If I could get back my youth, I’d do anything in the world - except
get up early, take exercise or be respectable.” The fearful Dorian succumbs
to Lord Henry’s mastery of words and follows his dictum of “Live, be afraid
of nothing!” In secret, Dorian makes an innermost wish for never growing
old and willingly pays the high price of losing his soul to get this so-called
advantage no other person has. When Dorian notices a cruel expression come
across his lips in the portrait, he locks it in his childhood attic room
and will have no one else ever look at it. Dorian then gives up living
a virtuous life and visits the East End slum section to go to the Two Turtles
pub. There he falls in love with the beautiful innocent singer Sibyl Vane
(Angela Lansbury). After she agrees to marry him, he cruelly dumps her
by following a wicked plan schemed out by Lord Henry to test her modesty.
Sibyl is so shaken by this rebuff that she commits suicide, while her roughneck
sailor brother James (Richard Fraser) vows revenge on the high hat he never
saw but heard him play to her Chopin’s Prelude. When Gladys (Donna Reed)
grows into a beautiful young woman some eighteen years later, Dorian selfishly
takes her away from her noble suitor David Stone (Peter Lawford). But Dorian
finds that in his heart he really loves her and decides to abandon Gladys
for her own good. Anxious to see how his one good deed will be pictured
in his leprous portrait (shown in color)–which holds all his sins–he
becomes overcome with grief when looking at it and his downfall comes about
when he tries to destroy the portrait in the same way he destroyed the
artist who painted it. 

Filled with understated Wilde ironies, outstanding performances by
the entire cast and elegant sets of the Victorian era, this Hollywood film
remarkably captures the spirit and remains faithful to the book–something
that’s rarely ever achieved in film as well as it is here. If only there
wasn’t such an abomination as the Hays Office, this might have been a masterpiece
showing Dorian’s wicked libertine hedonism at its fullest.

Full Review
In recent years, many Christmas-themed movies obtain displayed a lamentable Scrooge-like cynicism toward the time off. Thankfully, top dog Robert Zemeckis has entranced a contrasting slot with "The Brumal Express" (Warner Bros.), a visually captivating family fantasy anent a young boy's passage of self-discovery aboard a magical train bound for the North Pole.

Based on the beloved children's novel of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg, the film is a Christmas present for the young and the young at heart; a beautifully told fairy tale whose heartwarming sentiment is as welcome as a mug of steaming hot chocolate on a cold winter's day.

The film utilizes a cutting-edge computer animation technique called "performance capture" that digitally translates the movements and facial expressions of live actors into pixilated characters, marrying them with the virtual world of the story. The imaginative end result looks somewhere between animation and live action. The process allows star Tom Hanks to play five separate roles in the movie.

The tale opens on Christmas Eve, with the story's unnamed hero (a young boy "performed" by Tom Hanks, but voiced by Daryl Sabara) lying awake in his bed, awaiting the arrival of Santa, whose existence he has begun to doubt. Drifting off to sleep, he is roused by the loud rumblings of a steam locomotive pulling up to his snow-blanketed front yard. Rushing outside, he is met by the enchanted train's conductor (performed and voiced by Hanks) who ushers him aboard, alerting him to a golden ticket in his bathrobe pocket stamped for passage to the North Pole.

Once on board he meets the other youthful passengers on the eponymous express, including a kind-hearted girl (voiced and performed by Nona Gaye), a nerdy know-it-all (voiced and performed by Eddie Deezen) and a friendless boy (performed by Peter Scolari and voiced by Jimmy Bennett).

The bulk of the movie involves the voyage up to Santa land, highlighted by a show-stopping musical number of tap-dancing, back-flipping waiters serving up hot cocoa to the delighted youngsters, and a thrill-ride action sequence over a frozen lake. Along the way the boy also encounters a Tom Joad-like hobo (Hanks) riding the rails, who has a guardian-angel knack for showing up at the right times. One sequence of a lost ticket's flight through the wintry night borders on the balletic.

The train eventually pulls into the station at the North Pole just in time for Santa's annual send-off. But a mishap separates the three principal children from the rest of the rug-rats, triggering a mad scramble through the labyrinthine industrial areas and abandoned factories of Christmas village, before they find their way back to the town square, mobbed for Santa's departure.

Old St. Nick (once again, Hanks) is greeted like a rock star as he descends from his residence to his waiting sleigh. The main boy is selected to receive the ceremonial first present. The gift he chooses underlines the movie's twin themes of childlike wonder and sorrow over its loss.

Tinged with menace, the film's storybook images are, at once, both beautiful and haunting, evoking, by turns, Norman Rockwellesque nostalgia and the impressionistic otherworldliness of a childhood dream. Alan Silvestri's score is appropriately wistful and incorporates echoey old yuletide recordings by Bing Crosby for added effect.

Since the source material is only 22 pages in length, the plot is rather bare-bones, though, in this case, narrative simplicity seems an advantage.

Noticeable by their absence are any religious symbols or mentions of the spiritual significance of Christmas, especially given that the story involves rediscovering the "true meaning" of the holiday. However, while the movie remains outwardly secular, its underlying message is profoundly faith-friendly, as illustrated by the conductor's counsel that "the most real things are the things you can't see." On one level it can be interpreted as a parable about struggling to have faith in a world where "seeing is believing."

For a holiday treat, jump aboard "The Polar Express."
The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-I — general patronage. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is G — general audiences.

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Living Unoccupied, The

Jenny LeComte

Rating: 9 Beans

f a blood-spattered guy fresh from a near death experience with two gun-toting

lesbians staggered over to your car, what would you say? Certainly not ?hop in, mate,

I?ll give you a lift.?

That?s the trouble with this movie. It?s got more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.

I know you?re supposed to suspend your disbelief when bathed in the silvery light of

art house cinema, but hell?s bells. How much meandering can one take in 93 minutes?

Watching this movie is like taking a train across the Australian Outback. All the

scenery is the same and you?re on it for days, but you don?t appear to be going

anywhere.

The Living End is supposed to be a ?nihilistic black comedy? about two HIV-positive

men who decide to have one last hurrah before the grim reaper grabs them. Instead,

it?s a confusing hodge podge of two-dimensional characters played by unknown actors

who?ll stay that way if we?re lucky.

Luke (Mike Dytri) is a film critic. After he receives the death sentence from his doctor

and one too many obscene phone calls at home, he decides to drive aimlessly around

LA and talk to his portable tape recorder.

Jon (Craig Gilmore) is a drifter fresh from Muscle Beach who has been hopping into

strange cars ever since that fateful day at the AIDS clinic. When he hitches a ride with

Fern (Johanna Went) and Daisy (Mary Woronov), he ends up at the wrong end of a

Saturday night special. He somehow manages to pinch the gun and uses it to blow

away two homophobics out the front of a convenience store.

Luke just happens to be cruising past at the time and thinks that Jon - who is now

covered in blood and looks like an exhibit from the police museum - is a bit of all right.

I guess there?s no accounting for some people?s taste. It was bad enough when he let

Jon get into his car. But when he took him back to his apartment, I thought: ?He?s

definitely depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.?

It?s not long before the two men discover their common bond. Luke does the right

thing before they do the deed and tries to tell Jon he?s HIV-positive.

?Welcome to the club,? Jon replies.

When Jon pulls out his gun and starts fondling it, Luke senses there?s something not

quite kosher about this bloke and tries to kick him out of the apartment. Jon explains

that he?s going to die soon, anyway, and doesn?t give a damn about anything anymore.

?Let?s go to San Francisco,? Jon suggests and Luke, stupid prawn that he is, revs up

the car.

The rest of the movie is like ?Thelma and Louise? on a bad acid trip. Lots of weird

characters, bad techno music and plenty of long shots of Jon and Luke with no shirts

on. Jon continues to fondle his gun (no pun intended) and Luke occasionally whines

about going home. I don?t see why he doesn?t. It?s his car after all. But Luke seems

incapable of making any kind of decision.

Once in a while, Luke slopes off to a public phone box to call his artist friend Darcy

(Darcy Marta) collect and ask for her advice. I?ve got no idea why. Darcy?s flakier

than a fillet of fish. If she?s not tripping over all the weird paraphenalia in her studio,

she?s having unbelievably stupid rows with her live-in lover Peter (Scot Goetz). When

he complains that they don?t have enough sex, Darcy tells him she?s too worried about

Luke.

?He fell into a deep depression when Echo and the Bunnymen broke up,? she wailed.

It doesn?t get any better than that. Up until this point, The Living End was going

downhill fast. Then it went into freefall. Luke kept whining and started coughing as

well. Jon kept fondling his gun. There?s a tense stand-off somewhere in Montana (I?ve

got no idea how they ended up there and I don?t think the director, Gregg Araki,

knows either). Then the final credits start rolling and you?re left thinking what the…?

After the shock of the abrupt ending wears off, you?re also left thinking of more

productive ways of spending 93 minutes. Like shaving your eyeballs with a machete.

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I can guarantee that "Blades of Glory" is two times funnier than the average American comedy. That’s because it has two jokes, instead of one.

The first is: When straight men flounce, it’s funny. It just is. Sorry, don’t shoot the messenger, but at least to some, it’s always funny.

What a pair: Will Ferrell and Jon Heder in “Blades.” (By Melinda Sue Gordon — Dreamworks) More Movie Details ‘Blades of Glory’: National Showtimes   Watch the Trailer   More Movie Trailers   This Week’s New Releases   What’s On DVD   More Movie Coverage   var technorati = new Technorati() ; technorati.setProperty(’url’,'http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901776_Technorati.html’) ; technorati.article = new item(’Double Lutzes: \’Blades of Glory\”,’http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032901776.html’,'Ican guarantee that “Blades of Glory” is two times funnier than the average American comedy. That\’s because it has two jokes, instead of one.’,'Stephen Hunter’) ; document.write( technorati.getDisplaySidebar() ); Save & Share Article What’s This? Digg Google del.icio.us Yahoo! Reddit Facebook placeAd(’article’,commercialNode,24,”,false)

The movie’s high jinks come when Will Ferrell and Jon Heder sashay into the graceful world of figure skating and camp it up like a convention of Liberace impersonators, though the script is at pains to keep them nominally hetero. Figure skating, like ballet, while demanding the highest in athleticism, strength, stamina and courage, at the same time requires men to place their bodies into positions that they might not naturally assume. Its style, for men, is gay. Things that don’t usually stick out must be stuck out; things that don’t usually dangle must be dangled; things that don’t normally arch must be arched. For this reason, and the uneasiness that many heterosexuals still feel, even in these enlightened times, about behavior slightly tinted with lavender, the two activities are the focus of much he-boy mirth.

Shamelessly, Ferrell and Heder give themselves over to this practice. They play figure skating competitors, and the endless hilarity is visual: those awkward, self-conscious hetero male bodies, ill-formed and quaking with reluctance, thrown into a gossamer flutter of swanlike routines, clumsily syncopating themselves to the fantasy that they are light and graceful when, as all can see and laugh at, they are hopeless, clueless and graceless. To see seemingly reg’lar guys utterly stripped of dignity and defense is cruel enough, but crueler still is the laughter that you cannot seem to stop from rupturing your lungs and aorta. The costumes, meanwhile, look like they were designed by Salvador Dali high on absinthe and cocaine, with an unlimited sparkle budget. But that’s any figure skating costume, isn’t it?

As the plot has it, the two — who for reasons soon to be disclosed (joke No. 2) are banned from the rink — find a loophole that permits them back onto the ice to skate as a team, since the male-female linkage is only a tradition and not a rule. Thus, though they hate each other, they team up, boy-boy, and all that intimate face-in-crotch and hand-on-butt stuff that’s so stimulating to us when it’s across the boy-girl chasm suddenly becomes hysterical when it’s boy-boy and each guy is so desperate that he has to go forward with it. Other people’s misfortune is so amusing!

As the movie has it, the lumbering, hairy Ferrell plays the overcompensating Chazz Michael Michaels, an "outlaw" skater who has invented a persona as the Mick Jagger of the figure skating world. The joke is that his machismo is mostly fantasy and his hyper-masculinity is all the more off-putting for being fraudulent. Heder, still looking for a hit to cement his career after "Napoleon Dynamite," plays Jimmy MacElroy, slighter, wispier, more graceful, more girly. Again it’s funny seeing the lanky Heder trying desperately to achieve the fairy-princess, sparkly grace necessary for the demanding sport. The fact that he gets a little closer than Ferrell actually makes him funnier; when he goes into his tra-la-la on the ice — they’re both shameless, I should add — sticking his tushie out and making like a princess cygnet with his flappity-flapping arms as his chiffon costume trails tendrils in the wind and his cupid-blond hair gently vibrates, he’s a thing of non-beauty and a joy forever.

Joke No. 2: the endless humor of immature hostility. Jimmy and Chazz hate each other so much that they can’t control themselves, but they’re so stupid and inarticulate that their zingers don’t zing. Frustrated, they just can’t keep from acting out, and while sharing the podium after a tie for gold, they begin rolling around on the ice, throwing ill-timed punches, scratching each other’s eyes, kneeing each other’s crotches. They look like cats fighting in a bag and it’s not pretty (hence their ban from singles competition). Much of the movie’s humor comes from their complete inability to control their emotions, which spurt out all the time in messy, childish disarray. Men behaving badly: a surefire laugh-getter.

The filmmakers — the directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck and it seems about six different teams worked on the script — bring in a semblance of plot at the halfway point. Chazz and Jimmy are opposed in their aspirations to return to the top by the brother-sister team of Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (Will Arnett and Amy Poehler of "SNL"), who turn out to be ruthless, nasty and mean, always fine comic attributes. Far from being ruthless, nasty and mean, our heroes deserve to win because they are stupid, narcissistic and selfish.

William Fichtner has a nice spin as Jimmy’s ruthless, nasty and mean adoptive father, who abandons him when he is kicked out of skating, and Craig T. Nelson, who plays either coaches or cops, here plays a coach to decent effect. Seventy-nine-year-old William Daniels, one of the best character actors in the history of movies, has a nice little role. Jenna Fischer, whom some will spot as Pam from TV’s "The Office," plays the Van Waldenbergs’ wallflower sister with a thing for Jimmy. More than a few members of the figure skating community — Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Nancy Kerrigan — show up to prove they’re good sports, and the beautiful Sasha Cohen has a funny cameo at the end that’s worth waiting for.

Blades of Glory (93 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, profanity and some drug references. Also, the mascot Snowflake gets an arrow in the head.