Blades of Glory, the new comedy starring Will Farrell and Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), is a very funny movie, both verbally and visually. As is the case with Farrell’s movies in general, there is a huge amount of vulgarity and grossness, and the movie’s ideas and values are very good indeed, as is also typically true of Farrell’s films.

The film opened strong at the box office, finishing number one over the weekend with a U.S. take of $33 million. What was perhaps more surprising is that it received relatively good reviews. In this instance the critics were right—but there is one important angle they must have missed, or they would surely have hated the movie.

Blades of Glory tells the story of two male figure skaters who put aside their intense rivalry in order to have one last chance at winning—by skating as a pair, becoming the world’s first male couples team. The film obtains the expected humor from this central concept, but it also provides a good deal more.

One impressive thing is the amount of wordplay in the film. Farrell has always enjoyed the use of vivid and surprising combinations of words, and Blades of Glory provides many good examples. For example, when the team’s coach asks, "What do you guys have that no other pairs team has?" Farrell’s character replies, "Two baloney ponies?"

The film also uses the chemistry of Farrell and Heder to great effect. In one amusing exchange, Heder’s character says, "Get out of my face!" Ferrell’s character replies, "I’ll get inside your face!" Later, when the two are partners and living in the same room as they train together, Farrell says he needs special consideration because "the night is a really dark time for me." Heder replies, "The night is dark for everybody, you douche!"

Such exchanges superbly use Heder’s sardonic, exasperated persona to excellent effect, as he plays off of Farrell’s blustery, narcissistm.

The film was directed by the pair of young men responsible for the GEICO caveman commercials, and has an impressive amount of visual humor, from the ridiculous peacock costume Heder wears in his solo skating act early in the film, to "The Grublets," the horrendous, cheesy ice show Farrell’s character participates in after being banned from competitive figure skating, to the shot of Farrell’s character practicing the team’s signature move with a mannequin, which results in a series of decapitations and Heder’s horrified reaction.

One interesting angle, of course, is the central idea of two men skating together, and the implications that might have for some highly incendiary current social and political issues. One could easily imagine Hollywood playing this same-sex skating couple as a matter of liberation, trying to convince us that a male-male couple is just as good as a mixed one in every way, and not just in skating. And although the film makes the valid point that the two men have an advantage over a male-female couple in that their roughly equal physical strength would enable them to accomplish some moves that a mixed pair could not, the film actually makes a much stronger impression that the two men being together in this way is highly unnatural. They really look just awful. That’s what makes it funny. In addition, by frequently showing the two men together in very intinate physical proximity, often involving what used to be very private areas of the body, the film evokes a strong yuck factor that says more about homosexuality than a thousand sermons ever could.

It’s almost certainly unintentional on the filmmakers’ part, but it is an unavoidable truth of Blades of Glory and a very interesting and potent political statement.