You & Your Monkey: A Review of Blades of Glory by Way of Hot Fuzz and Rushmore
by Mary Roebuck

Of the many brilliant moments in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, perhaps the most stupidly, ridiculously hilarious is the OR scrubs joke.  It’s just about the lamest drunk joke I’ve ever heard, and yet it’s just stupid enough that every time I see it I’m sent into fits of laughter.  I used to make my friends, none of whom had seen the movie, re-enact it with me so that they could witness the full impact of the hilarity.  It’s less funny when told by one person.  They mostly didn’t get it, but it amused me.

This weekend I decided to review Blades of Glory.  I enjoy Will Ferrell and people I like usually show up in those sorts of comedies.  It’s not something I was dying to see, for that I should have seen The Lookout, but I was in the mood for some ridiculous humor, and that it did deliver.  What it also delivered, that I wasn’t expecting, was the trailer for Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz.  Previously I’d just seen it on my computer screen, every version I could possibly download: the internet trailer, both teasers, the domestic trailer, the international trailer.  I may be slightly obsessed with that one.  Mental health aside, there are just some things that are even better on the big screen. Simon Pegg in action mode is awesome.   Plus, there’s all the huge stars.

My point in bringing up Rushmore is actually barely a point.  What it is, is a joke in the Hot Fuzz trailer which, upon this most recent viewing of it, reminded me of the OR scrubs joke.  I should probably relate the joke to you.  I’ll make it quick.  Max has a crush on Rosemary.  Rosemary is dating Peter, the surgeon.  Max and Peter meet and Max is slightly drunk and asks Peter what he’s wearing.  Peter answers, “OR scrubs.”  Max replies, “OR they?”  It is one of the funniest things ever.  Hot Fuzz has a similar moment, one of those ‘so stupid it’s the funniest thing ever’ types of jokes.  Well, it may actually be more obviously funny than the OR scrubs, but it’s still a ‘statement of the obvious’ sort of joke.  It involves actual mustaches and beer mustaches and the words “You’ve got a mustache.”  It’s pretty hilarious.  And Hot Fuzz is going to be awesome.  People should go see Hot Fuzz.

But, should people go see Blades of Glory?  It’s pretty stupidly funny, in that way I sort of love.  That’s a reason to go.  Another reason is for this interesting thing that’s starting to happen in these sorts of comedies, or at least Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights.  I’m going to say this, and some of you may think me mistaken, but you’ll have to trust that I’m right on this.  Talladega Nights just may have done more for mainstream queer cinema than Brokeback Mountain.  Ricky Bobby and his French rival, Jean, kiss at the end of the movie.  They’d made a bet that if Ricky lost to Jean he’d kiss him.  As I recall, Ricky wins, but kisses Jean anyway, with a shrug and a, ‘what the hell.’  It was a good kiss.  No peck, no simple smashing of lips, no one dies, and no one hates themselves afterwards.  What it ends up lampooning is outdated ideas about masculinity and the audiences’ discomfort with such displays.  And the audience I saw Talladega Nights with sure was uncomfortable.  You could tell they didn’t know whether they should be laughing or grossed out or nothing at all.  It amused the hell out of me.

Blades of Glory, while lacking much of a kiss, has plenty of other moments designed to play with levels of comfort with the homosocial or homoerotic.  The easy and obvious way to read this movie is to say it’s just another movie to use the discomfort as a joke, and it could have been just that.  I went into it knowing and almost expecting that.  Those moments were flaunted too much in the trailer, with the crotch grabbing and comments about Jon Heder’s character looking like a girl, for me to expect much else.  However, what ends up lampooned more than anything, is the discomfort with the idea of two men competing as a pair in ice dancing.  Our heroes may be jokes, but they are our heroes and, even in slapstick, the heroes are rooted for and the people trying to take them down are rooted against.  It just so happens that here the bad guys are the people who don’t want to see or let two men skate together.  Metaphor, anyone?  I know, I know, slapstick, easy jokes, button pushing, and all that, but that’s what I see.  I don’t think I’m wrong.

April 3, 2007