CINEMA – Cutting Edge Humour

By Steve Pratt

Blades Of Glory (12A) Stars: Will Ferrell, Jon Heder, Will Arnett, Amy Poehler, William Fichtner, Jenna Fischer, Craig T Nelson 93 minsIT’S a surprise no-one has got around to making a figure skating comedy before now as the costumes, the posing and over-the- top theatricality of ice dance are begging to be made fun of.Blades of Glory is well worth the wait.The big shock is that star Will Ferrell – an American comedian we Brits either love or loathe (I’m usually in the latter category) – is actually funny, and well paired with Jon Heder, from cult comedy Napoleon Dynamite.This comedy works because the writers aren’t just content to make a funny version of Dancing On Ice. They double the fun, along with the spills, by making the figure skating pair both male.Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) is a womanising rock star-style skating champ. Former child prodigy Jimmy MacElroy (Heder) is the opposite – a colourfully- costumed artist of the ice whose peacock costume is a masterpiece of kitsch.Their rivalry comes to a head when they tie for first place at the world championships and end up fighting on the podium. Both men are banned from competing for life. Chazz is reduced to playing the wizard in a children’s ice revue, while Jimmy works in a shoe store.Then one of Jimmy’s obsessive fans, ie stalker, finds the answer to their prayers by discovering there’s nothing in the rules preventing the two men skating together in the pairs. Cue much hilarity as the couple, as different as chalk and cheese on and off the ice, are thrown together in a bid to regain the crown.Out to stop them are the unusually-close brother and sister skating pair (Arnett and Poehler) who use their put-upon sister (Fischer) to sabotage the Michaels/MacElroy combination.The odd couple comedy results in hilarious results on the ice with Ferrell and Heder’s ice act producing big laughs under another partnership, directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon.Sunshine (15) Stars: Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wrong, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Strong 107 minsMOST avenues in space have already been explored on screen. So Sunshine will inevitably bring to mind a variety of past science fiction films, from Alien to 2001 A Space Odyssey. The team behind 28 Days Later and The Beach – director Danny Boyle, writer Alex Garland and producer Andrew Macdonald – offer fresh perspectives on the old watch-thisspace story.Fifty years from now the Sun is dying, threatening the existence of mankind back on Earth. So the world unites to finance an international mission to plant a bomb that will re-ignite the bit of the Sun that’s fading.As the spaceship is called Icarus II, you can bet that the crew will come across Icarus I at some point on their voyage. This disappeared on the same mission seven years earlier, for reasons that aren’t immediately apparent when they find it drifting like a spaced out Marie Celeste. This, coupled with an accident that jeopardises the new mission, leaves the crew of Icarus II up the space creek without a paddle – and allows Garland to engage in some philosophical mumbo-jumbo as well as a monster in space storyline.Boyle’s direction is terrific, as is the design of the whole movie from the swirling spaceships to the golden suits worn by the astronauts. Everyone concerned with the movie is at pains to point out that the story is based in scientific fact, although most as a space movie not a sign of things to come.The cast playing the crew of eight men and women offer a who who’s of international acting with Cillian Murphy’s physicist emerging as the closest the film gets to a hero. Sunshine Superman: Pages 14-15

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