Blades of Glory

Released March 30, 2007, and directed by Will Speck and Josh Gordon, Blades of Glory pits Will Ferrell's Chazz Michael Michaels — a swaggering, hard-living rink rock star — against Jon Heder's pampered wunderkind Jimmy MacElroy. Stripped of their gold medals and banned from competitive singles skating for life, the sworn enemies discover a loophole in the rules: nothing stops them from returning as a pairs team, the first ever made of two men.

Craig T. Nelson plays the coach who welds them together, and Will Arnett and Amy Poehler steal scenes as a creepily close brother-sister rival duo, with Jenna Fischer rounding out the ensemble. The climax hinges on the Iron Lotus, a move so perilous that in a previous attempt the man decapitated his partner with his skates — and the film milks every rotation of it. Real skating royalty leaned into the joke, with Brian Boitano, Peggy Fleming, Dorothy Hamill, and Nancy Kerrigan appearing as federation judges, plus cameos from Sasha Cohen and Scott Hamilton.

Production had its own skating injury: Heder broke his ankle performing a skating program during filming, briefly delaying the shoot.

Audiences showed up — a number-one opening weekend of $33 million and $145.7 million worldwide against a $61 million budget — and critics mostly went along, with a 70% Rotten Tomatoes score. Landing in the heart of the great mid-2000s Will Ferrell comedy run, it survives the way those movies do: as an endlessly quoted sleepover staple, and proof that two grown men in sequined spandex on ice can be high art.