Flutterby™! : On Edge

In the usual "looking for mindless entertainment" mode after digging through taxes on Saturday, we rented On Edge. It's figure skating meets This Is Spinal Tap, following the dreams of 3 figure skaters at a rink in Southern California as they claw their way to the regionals.

As of this writing there are two reviews of On Edge over at IMDB, one appears to be written by a publicist, the other by a figure skating judge.

Which is the movie's main flaw: It goes over the top in kicking at the figure skating judges, which is funny as hell (especially when the panel at the final showdown is composed entirely of Olympic medalists doing their send-ups of skating judges), but if you've never paid attention to the politics will probably get completely missed or just look mean-spirited.

It's also got Jason Alexander doing the "Seinfeld made me rich so now I'm doing my indy film dues" thing, unfortunately he doesn't really work as a sympathetic Zamboni driver who believes himself instrumental in the successes of each of the contestants. In a movie this over-the-top he could have been the clueless schmoe whose actions happen to work out, or he could have been the otherwise absent father figure, but somehow he never clicks in either role.

There were a few laugh out loud moments, but I never cared for the characters the way I would in a Christopher Guest film, and a little too often I found myself thinking "there's a skating in-joke that I didn't get". So while it wasn't nearly as cool as Simon Costa and Ruckus down at Cafe Amsterdam on Friday night, it was just fine for a "stay home and veg" movie.