On Edge

I love figure skating. It's my favorite Olympic sport and Lord knows it has it's eccentric, bizarre side which is why it was ripe for a mock documentary like this. However, director Slovin (who also co-wrote the screenplay) is no Christopher Guest. What Guest did to community theater (Waiting for Guffman), dog shows (Best in Show), and country music (A Mighty Wind) is inspired lunacy. One can only wish that he'd taken on this subject as well. Slovin is simply not up to the task. Not by a long shot!

The over-the-top writing is only intermittently funny. The direction is slow and clunky! A lot of the jokes are forced. Most of it is downright stupid. The reason Guest succeeds in his mockumentaries is because he takes the original subject matter very seriously. His players and situations are very true to life. That's what makes them funny. The characters in "On Edge" are not so skillfully veiled tropes of real people like Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan and Michelle Kwan. They are not conceived properly and in the end simply become annoying and unreal. It doesn't help that the three female leads cannot do anything with the material. The idea of an ebullient, overweight skater may work for a five minute Saturday Night Live skit, but over the course of 90 minutes it strains the reality of a real or fake documentary. There aren't any people like this. A 250 pound skater could never do a triple jump. So instead of poking fun at the real world of skating, Slovin invents fantasies to satirize, weakening the entire movie as a result. The movie actually reminded me of another mockumentary "Drop Dead Gorgeous" about a regional beauty queen contest. The difference is that in that movie the girls competing are totally believable. It's hilarious! The female figure skaters in "On Edge" are not.

Jason Alexander gives one of the worst performances of his career. He is embarrassingly dull. He adds little to the movie. And why would a documentary film maker spend so much time with a Zamboni driver in the first place! He should have been smart and passed on the movie. Chris Hogan as the documentary film maker is square in delivery and hopelessly miscast. You don't believe he's a film maker at all! It would have been better to have the character an unseen person behind the scenes. John Glover has a few funny moments as an over the hill Russian skater but the barely acceptable accent wears out its welcome fast. And ice skating legend Scott Hamilton delivers a horrid, unfunny, overly broad, embarrassing performance as a prissy, chain smoking, yellow toothed, bad hair day skating judge. You wonder what he got paid to debase the sport this badly. Adding insult to injury, other skating legends like Kristi Yamaguchi, Robin Cousins, Peter Caruthers, Randy Gardner and Ty Babilonia appear as competition judges. Did none of them realize how bad this movie was.

Well, the studio did. They sent it right to video. And if you see it in the video store, spare yourself. If you must have a figure skating movie, try "The Cutting Edge"! That at least honors the sport!

O.K. I never would have know about this movie had it not been for a friend. She knew I would like it and I really did. Maybe you have to have a daughter involved in a competitive sport like figure skating or horseback riding to see the humor of it all but to me the whole movie was brilliantly funny. Satire on a shoe string! Reminiscent of Christopher Guest (Best in Show 2000, Waiting for Guffman 1996 ), who I totally admire...it had my full attention. It's basically a pseudo-documentary drama-soap opera-comedy about young Southern California girls competing at a local then regional championship in figure skating.

There's a remarkable cast involved. Jason Alexander was highly convincing as a Ice Surface Engineer...i.e. Zamboni driver who has the scoop on all the poop. Then we have a really hammy Scott Hamilton playing a psycho skating judge who rants about the chaste and lofty ideals at the heart of the sport. God, he's so awful to look at (yellow teeth, thrift store clothing) that it's almost painful to watch him. His voice is drippingly saccharine all the while spewing complete nonsense. If nothing else he really nailed the gay figure skating persona in this judge. You just gotta love him.

There are some other well known figure skating personalities involved also...Tai Babilonia, Peter Caruthers, Steven Cousins, Randy Gardner, and Kristi Yamaguchi all play the part of the five regional judges. We all know judges can be arbitrary and vindictive not to mention down right blind, so it must have been a hoot for this group of professionals to get some deserved revenge however slight, by acting like their one time nemesis's.

All three lead rolls were perfectly cast and it would seem they must have had a lot of fun both on and off set. A.J. Langer as J.C.Cain, who raises Cain as a trailer trash Tonya Harding type. Marissa Winokur was the greatest as Wendy Wodinski,an overweight skater who has all the right moves but not the right grooves. She will remind you of Ricki Lake in ‘Hairspray' 1988. And Barret Swatek as Veda Tilman,the perfect ice princess.

I could never tell if the movie was low budget or made to look low budget but it was incredibly realistic whichever the case may be and supplemented the overall plausibility of a mocumentary. The music was campy and diverse also aiding in the over all cogency of the humor. I really enjoyed this movie. Worth a fun rent.

I like mockumentaries and thought this one had potential as the ice skating world is ripe for picking, but it was not to be. "On Edge" must've looked good on paper as there are lots of good set-ups for comedic moments but the execution is awful. The best films in this type of film (Think "Best in Show" or "Incident at Loch Ness" for two wildly different but highly effective mockumentaries) seem to know that the comedy works best when the on screen characters don't "try" to be funny. "On Edge" features so much self conscious mugging for the camera that I'd bet it was fun to be on the set at the time of filming but for those of us in the audience it's very hard to sit through. It's sort of like visiting family and having the children constantly tug at your sleeve to watch them perform their ballet twirling or magic acts. That works fine on a family level but not on a feature film level. It's really a shame too because the movie has a charming blueprint. It focuses on a number of young ice skaters prepping for the regional competition. There's the fat girl, the twins, the klutz, the biker chick, and the one for whom ice skating isn't her real dream but her stage mother won't let her stop skating because she's a natural. Jason Alexander is sort of an everyman, playing Zamboni Phil, and commenting sagely on the different girls and their managers. He must've really needed a paycheck to appear in this turkey. I'd like to see this movie remade by Christopher Guest and company. They could do it proud.

Judging from some of the comments about this movie, I guess you have to be an ex-skater (or a fan of skating) to appreciate this movie. Yes, it is WAY, WAY over the top, but I think people are missing that it was MEANT to be. I found it a cute and funny film. No, it's not close to one of the greatest mockumentary ever made, but I enjoyed it.

Even though a lot of facts about competitive figure skating are gotten wrong in this movie (deliberately and hilariously so, in some cases) the filmmakers somehow inadvertently got a lot right. While most of these characters are grossly exaggerated for comic affect, I recognize almost all of them. There were quite a few Vedas that I recall: kids who were very good, but didn't give a rat's ass about skating and wouldn't be doing it if their parents (usually but not always their "skating mother") weren't forcing them to. Yes, there were most CERTAINLY mothers as pushy as Veda's mother (some worse, come to think of it and some were even in fur coats) although most of them (thank the Lord) weren't channeling Joan Crawford! Even the friendly and seemingly ever present Zamboni guy (Jason Alexander) is a character I remember. And if you think judges being prejudiced only happens on the international level, well, wake up and smell the coffee!!! There were even a few J.C.'s, girls who couldn't care less about the Olympics, but were working their way towards ice shows. Although you don't have to win Regionals to get into one, you just try out! <g>

Okay this is a spoof about documentary style movies about figure skating in Southern California. It's not supposed to be great but it has a great cast. I love Wendie Malick as the single mother obsessed with her daughter, Veda, who has a secret passion for cooking and would rather be in the kitchen than a skater. She has a Tonya Harding type J.C. Cain who would love to be the queen of the ice Capades and shows. She comes from a trailer park community. The third contestant is played by Marisa Janet Winokur (she won a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical for Hairspray). She plays Wendy, a girl from a wholesome supportive family and coached by her mother. She finally gets her dream coach after his client is eliminated. You see a lot of familiar faces like Jason Alexander as Zamboni Phil, Chris Hogan as the Professor, Kathy Griffin as Kathy Katz among others. I don't take this film seriously. Oh Scott Hamilton, Peter Carruthers, Kristi Yamaguchi show that they can poke fun at their sport.