Hey, all. Capone in the Windy City here.

The formula has already become pretty standard: Will Ferrell picks a profession and finds a way to both honor and dishonor it. Then he backs up the Brinks truck and shovels in the cash. He did it with ANCHORMAN and TALLADEGA NIGHTS, and he's done it again with BLADES OF GLORY, with slightly lesser but still usually funny results. (It looks like Ferrell may be doing it again next year with his take on basketball, SEMI-PRO.) The profession this time around is men's figure skating, and as you can probably tell from all the commercials you've seen for this film in recent, Ferrell in a bedazzled body suit can be a scream.

Ferrell plays Chazz Michael Michaels, a sex-addicted pro skater who wows the crowds with his overly macho routines that include fire balls coming from his hands and overt flirtations with the ladies in the crowd. His main competitor is the slightly femme Jimmy MacElroy (NAPOLEON DYNAMITE's Jon Heder, in what is clearly his best role since that film), a sensitive man who dresses in baby blue and emits doves from his costume during his routines. His adoptive billionaire father (William Fichtner in a rare comic turn) has been training him since he was a youngster and losing has never been an option. After an altercation between the men during a medal ceremony, in which they tied for the gold, the pair are banned from men's skating for life.

Several years later, someone tells the two men (who have taken on menial jobs to make ends meet) that, although they have been banned from men's single skating, they are still eligible to compete as part of a pair. In order to make it to the big competition, they must sign up in just days, leaving them no time to find female partners to train with. MacElroy's ex-coach (Craig T. Nelson) comes up with the bright idea of pairing the men together, since nowhere in "the rules" does it say it can't be done. This puts them in direct competition with the reigning pairs champions, the brother and sister team of Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (real-life married couple Will Arnett and Amy Poehler), who have been known to cheat to win with the help of their less-than-willing sister Katie (Jenna Fischer of "The Office").

Most of the film consists of silly vignettes showing the two men getting over their differences and trying very hard not to look too gay while performing their routines. Good luck! Ferrell and Heder have a good comic chemistry together, and neither one seems to be carrying the other. They are both all-too willing to totally humiliate themselves for a laugh and that certainly helps in some of the film's weaker spots. First-time feature directing team Josh Gordon and Will Speck (the two come out of the commercial world) fill their film with faces familiar to those who have ever held a mild interest in winter sports and to those familiar with Ferrell's stable of co-stars in recent years. The film is far from a classic, and I'm guessing even the outtakes are weaker than Ferrell's usual best for deleted scenes, but BLADES OF GLORY still has a big handful of explosive laughs and a whole lot of reasons to smile. Sometimes the film tries too hard and things just get plain stupid, but overall, it's tough not to stumble out of this one without your sides hurting just a little.

Capone