Review: 'Blades of Glory' scores hilariously

(CNN) -- They say that figure skating requires the elegance of a royal court, the grace of a ballerina, the speed of a sprinter, the balance of a tightrope walker, the endurance of a marathon runner, the coordination of a juggler, the strength of a high jumper and the rhythm of a dancer.
So Will Ferrell's surely not the first name that comes to mind when considering the sport.
But once you've seen him hit the rink in body-hugging red spandex with a "cowboy" leather jacket and chaps, there's no looking away. In "Blades of Glory," he is Chazz Michael Michaels, the bad boy of figure skating, "sex on ice."
Jon Heder is Jimmy MacElroy, Chazz's fiercest rival and also his polar opposite: a classical skater who embodies the elegance, grace and beauty of the sport. The first time we see MacElroy strut his stuff he's wearing his famous purple peacock combination, complete with tail feathers and glove puppet. (Watch Ferrell and Heder get revealing )
When raunchy, rebellious Chazz has to share the winners' podium with winsome, antiseptic Jimmy, push comes to shove and they are soon trading blows in front of shocked fans and dignitaries -- and a TV audience of millions. They're both banned from the sport for life.
But three years later, the two washouts realize there is a loophole in the ruling. They could still compete, but only if they team up as a pair.
It's an irresistibly silly idea (though not one the International Olympics Committee is likely to countenance any time soon) and "Blades of Glory" knows just where the comedy gold is hidden.
"What do you two have that the other teams don't?" demands grizzled coach Craig T. Nelson.
"Two [penises]," says Chazz.
Exactly.
Letting it all hang out
Ferrell -- who gave Sacha Baron Cohen a long, passionate kiss in "Talladega Nights" and who has stripped in pretty much everything except "Elf" -- knows that sexual humiliation earns big yuks. The film's artfully choreographed guy-on-guy action is a laugh riot. In what must be considered the movie's money shot, Ferrell grits his teeth and gingerly hoists his partner above his head by his crotch. Man, that's gotta hurt.
Refreshingly, especially after the shrill disavowals of male intimacy throughout "Wild Hogs," "Blades of Glory" permits its hetero heroes to get beyond the wince factor and bond -- and not just in a fistfight, either.
Although he doesn't get script credit and he's not working with regular collaborator Adam McKay here (it's actually co-directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, with a screenplay credited to Jeff and Craig Cox, among others), Ferrell remains the movie's alpha male.
Sporting a Jim Morrison 'do and bringing his voice down an octave, he makes self-confessed sex addict Chazz another in his long line of vainglorious dunderheads. "He's still playing George Bush," a colleague whispered to me -- and if he isn't, he's playing Ricky Bobby's second cousin.
But Farrell's flamboyant oafs remain endearing for their guileless childishness, "mind-bottling" way with words, and the star's willingness to let it all hang out ("I thought you'd like to see what a real skater's body looks like," he tells Jimmy over his paunch).
Heder, blond-haired and modeling a series of pastel turtlenecks, has less to play with. It's like putting Donny Osmond up against John McEnroe. But the toothsome "Napoleon Dynamite" star holds up his end in the petulant squabbles that make up the bulk of the off-ice time, and he appears to know his lutz from his salchow.
Too vindictive for comfort, Will Arnett and Amy Poehler are the creepy brother-and-sister ice-dancing champs, Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg, ersatz heavies in matching pink tulle (props to costume designer Julie Weiss, who clearly had herself a ball).
"Blades of Glory" takes a soft target and runs rings around it for 93 amusing minutes. Ferrell isn't breaking new ground, but one day -- when he's branching out to play psycho killers and getting in touch with his inner Thespian -- we'll look back on his clowning period and wonder why he would want to do anything else.
"Blades of Glory" is rated PG-13 and runs 93 minutes. For Entertainment Weekly's take, click here.

Singer's 'debauched' image not whole story

LONDON, England (AP) -- First off, there's the diminutive singer's look: a black beehive of hair, mascara-drenched eyes, old-style sailor tattoos. It's part Dusty Springfield, part Morticia Addams.
Then, there's the 23-year-old's extraordinary voice, like Billie Holiday channeling the Shangri-Las.
The combination helped push Winehouse's second album, the soaring, Phil Spector-ish "Back to Black," to the top of the British charts and many critics' year-end best lists in 2006. It was released in the U.S. in mid-March. (Watch Winehouse on loving "all or nothing"
But her music is not the only thing about her that garners attention. Her high-voltage personality and reputation for heavy drinking and smoking, and blunt speaking, have landed her, time and again, in the pages of the tabloid press.
It's an image Winehouse's songs do nothing to dispel. "Back to Black" spawned the hit song "Rehab," with its autobiographical refrain: "They tried to make me go to rehab/I said no, no, no."
"I listen to a lot of '60s music, but society is different now," said Winehouse, fresh from winning a Brit Award as the year's best female British act. "I'm a young woman, and I'm going to write about what I know."
It's a winning formula -- "Back to Black" is a compelling combination of the retro and the risque.
Whereas Winehouse's first album, 2003's "Frank," drew on hip-hop and jazz, "Back to Black" turns for inspiration to the dense harmonies, soaring, orchestral arrangements and heart-on-sleeve emotion of early Motown and 1960s girl groups.
If the sound is shimmering, the lyrics are lacerating. "I told you I was trouble/You know that I'm no good," she sings on "You Know I'm No Good."
Winehouse says it's the unashamed emotionalism of the decades-old music that appeals to her.
"A lot of music now is trying to be cool and like, 'Yeah, I don't really care about you' -- a really blase attitude," she said. "I think it's much nicer to be in love, and throw yourself into it, and want to lie in the road for that person.
"It's like the difference between having a dance in the middle of the party and standing around the outside with a beer bottle trying to look cool."
She says the Shangri-Las -- the girl-group behind "Leader of the Pack" and other drama-drenched '60s singles -- "pretty much had a song for every stage of a relationship: being lonely, then finding someone, being in love with them, then breaking up with the boy, then crying about it. They've got a song for every occasion. Saw me through a fair few good and bad times, definitely."
Winehouse's good and bad times have been gleefully chronicled in the British press. The tabloids have feasted on accounts of binge-drinking, drug use and feuds with fellow musicians. She is famously blunt in her assessment of her peers, once describing Dido's sound as "background music -- the background to death" and saying of pop princess Kylie Minogue, "she's not an artist ... she's a pony."
Winehouse freely acknowledges that she likes to smoke marijuana and drink -- as her occasionally ragged live performances attest -- and has admitted she is "a terrible drunk."
She has also talked about her eating disorders and told a newspaper that she has been diagnosed as manic depressive but refuses to take medication.
"Frank," a moderate hit in Britain, was followed by a creative slump during which she broke up with her boyfriend and spent $390 a week on marijuana -- a habit she has since cut back, she says.
During the same period, she suffered from debilitating writer's block -- hence the three-year gap between "Frank" and "Back to Black."
"I had writer's block for so long," she said. "And as a writer, your self-worth is literally based on the last thing you wrote. ... I used to think, 'What happened to me?'
"At one point it had been two years since the last record and (the record company) actually said to me, 'Do you even want to make another record?' I was like, 'I swear it's coming.' I said to them, 'Once I start writing, I will write and write and write. But I just have to start it.' "
'I'm just a musician'
Veteran music journalist John Aizlewood says there is a danger Winehouse's tabloid image will overshadow her music. But he thinks her recent, sober concert appearances suggest she is aware of the risk.
"I think she is trying to put the bacchanalian, debauched Amy Winehouse behind her," Aizlewood said.
Speaking to The Associated Press between magazine cover shoots in a north London photo studio, Winehouse is strikingly -- almost disappointingly -- articulate, professional and friendly, the opposite of her tabloid image.
The daughter of a taxi driver father and pharmacist mother, she grew up in the London suburbs and attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, a factory for British music and acting moppets. She also went to the Brit School -- a performing arts academy in the "Fame" mold -- and originally was signed to "American Idol" creator Simon Fuller's 19 Management.
But she says she never sought fame.
"I'm so lucky to get to do music that I like, but I think the record company knows that I wouldn't kill myself if I didn't sell 2 million records," she said.
"When I was 18, I wasn't banging their door down. I didn't go out looking to be famous. I'm just a musician."
If it all went sour, "I would pack this in and go and be a waitress or a housewife."
Now, however, Winehouse is eager to go back into the studio to work on new material. Before that, there's the album's U.S. release and a handful of high-profile stateside dates.
Aizlewood thinks Winehouse's "fantastic soul voice" has a chance of winning over Americans.
"A lot of British bands fail in America because they give America something Americans do better -- that's why most British hip-hop has failed," he said. "But they won't have come across anything quite like Amy Winehouse."
At home there's the continuing media scrutiny, recently centering on drug use, her weight loss and an alleged feud with singer Lily Allen.
Winehouse insists she is not bothered by the attention -- "It's not nice, but it comes with the job." But it clearly rankles. She says the tabloids do not tend to run pictures of her on the many times when she is sober and calm.
"I had my eyes closed there," she tells an AP photographer snapping her picture. "You can sell that one to the tabloids and say I was drunk."
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