Comedy

Blades of Glory ***

• Rated PG-13
• Playing At: AMC Orange Park 24, AMC Regency 24, Carmike Amelia Island 7, Cinemark Tinseltown, Hollywood River City 14, Playtime D.I., Regal Avenues 20, Regal Beach Blvd. 18, Regal Mall St. Augustine 6

Ice Dreams

RACHEL DEAHL

Figure skating takes a much-deserved ribbing in a new Will Ferrell vehicle

Figure skating seems too easy a target for a comedy. The skin-tight leotards, the ice prancing, the humiliating falls. But “Blades of Glory,” the new romp starring Will Ferrell as one-half of the world’s first-ever, male-male figure-skating duo, proves easy targets make for bulls-eye humor. As it happens, figure skating has never had a proper send-up on film — unless you count the supposed-to-be-serious “Ice Castles” — and “Blades” relishes in this, delighting in cameos from the sport’s celebrities current and past — Sasha Cohen and Nancy Kerrigan anyone? — while making a delightful mockery of its subject matter.

When “Blades” opens, the World Championships in Oslo are in full swing. And in the male figure-skating portion, wunderkind Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) is finishing his flamboyant set, angling for gold. Via TV career montages, we learn that MacElroy was raised to perfection on the ice. Adopted at a young age by a millionaire who began “collecting” sports prodigies, MacElroy is known for his grace.

Upsetting the competition with his edgier set is MacElroy’s rival, Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell). Bred on the wrong side of the tracks, Chazz is a hard-drinking, hard-partying skater. A self-proclaimed sex addict whose mantra is “I am figure skating!” Chazz grew up in Detroit where he was “big in the underground sewer skating scene.”

When Chazz and Jimmy tie for the gold, a scuffle on the podium leads to public embarrassment in front of legions of fans, while setting the local mascot ablaze. Kicked out of men’s figure-skating for good, Chazz winds up drinking himself into oblivion in a traveling ice show while Jimmy, “unadopted” by his father, tries to make ends meet working at a ski shop. When the two are uneasily reunited — an old loophole doesn’t deny the duo the chance to participate in pairs figure skating — they decide to take on the establishment and try again for gold, this time, competing against the standard male/female figure-skating pairs.

Equipped with a stronger script than in some of his recent outlandish comedies, like “Talladega Nights” (which felt loosely structured and improvised), Ferrell does the heavy lifting here. While Heder provides some welcome visual yucks as the more effeminate foil, Ferrell steals the show with his ability to inject humor into even the most insipid scenarios. Whether having his head buried in Heder’s crotch during their first number on the ice together or simply spitting out lines about his sex addiction, Ferrell proves once again how much he can do with a little material.

The supporting efforts by the husband-and-wife team of Amy Poehler (“Saturday Night Live”) and Will Arnett (of TV’s best cancelled comedy “Arrested Development”), playing the cheating figure-skating brother/sister pair Fairchild and Stranz Van Waldenberg, are good, but “Blades” is best when Ferrell delights off the ice and when the dance numbers kick in on it. While Ferrell and Heder enjoy plenty of uproarious numbers, Poehler and Arnett also get their share of giddy, ridiculous showmanship, once in a hip-hop-style act (for which Arnett dons a gold tooth) and again in a “historical” number during which Poehler plays Marilyn Monroe to Arnett’s JFK.

Although other strong supporting players are mostly wasted — Jenna Fischer (aka Pam from “The Office”) has little to do here and Craig T. Nelson (as, of all things, a coach) issues mostly stale pep talks — “Blades” finally gives Ferrell the kind of comedy that has some good gags and a decent storyline.

Comedy / Drama

The Hoax ***

• Rated R
• Opens on Friday, April 6 in area theaters

Pants on Fire

PHILIP BOOTH

Figure skating takes a much-deserved ribbing in a new Will Ferrell vehicle

Ambitious scammers make fascinating characters in real life — newsroom fabulists Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Janet Cooke, Kubrick imitator Alan Conway, F.B.I. agent Robert Hanssen. They are also captivating in the inspired-by-true-events movies that often result from the most notorious cases, not to mention fictions like new television drama “The Riches” and Stephen Frears’ 1990 gem “The Grifters.”

Clifford Irving, mastermind of a ballsy 1970s publishing con that he very nearly pulled off, told his own story in the 1974 Orson Welles documentary “F For Fake.” Thirty-five years after Irving sold a bogus biography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes to a major publishing house, the author’s story has re-entered popular culture via Lasse Hallstrom’s new film, “The Hoax.” It’s a return to relevance for the director, following the disappointments of “Casanova,” “An Unfinished Life” and “The Shipping News.”

Hallstrom’s comedy-tinged drama is a surprisingly thrilling tale, centered around a commanding performance by Richard Gere as the corrupt Irving and superb work by Alfred Molina as Dick Susskind, the author’s writing associate-in-crime and, ultimately, a man of conscience. Irving’s elaborately staged ruse sparks the writer to new heights of creativity before the pressures of the con, and apparent bouts of paranoid delusions, lead to his downfall.

McGraw-Hill’s top brass and other publishing associates, including Life magazine head Shelton Fisher (Stanley Tucci) and Andrea Tate (Hope Davis), Irving’s editor, might have seen the con coming: A biography of Dutch art forger Elmyr de Hory was among Irving’s previous books for the publishing house. Executives should have known better than to trust a man who promised that he would turn in the most important book of the century.

“The Hoax,” in addition to detailing the desperate measures taken by Irving and Susskind to keep the con alive and to avoid encounters with any real or imagined encounters with any of Hughes’ associates, offers a commentary on the political malaise of the times. Did Richard Nixon’s fall indirectly result from his fears regarding whether Hughes would use Irving’s book to air secrets regarding Hughes’ bribery of the president? As it turns out, in this case, the fabulist was manipulated by the billionaire.