The Cutting Edge is a 1991 romantic sports comedy-drama set in the allegedly exciting world of Olympic-level figure-skating. Ice maiden Moira Kelly has been reared from birth by her driving father (Stepfather star Terry O’Quinn adding a creepy touch) to be a champion, but is constantly let down because she’s so unpleasant that no one wants to be her partner. On the other side of the tracks, macho jock DB Sweeney is invalided out of ice hockey and recruited by Kelly’s Russian coach (Roy Dotrice) to team up with her. They hate each other on sight but develop into a potential winning team, and, in between being nasty to each other, fall in nauseating lurve. The tension builds up as to who is going to win that Olympic gold medal in the finale (guess!) and whether the leads will be able to hold off strangling each other in time for the big last-minute clinch.
The whole thing is a stew of mismatched couple and underdog-triumphs-in-sport clichés, directed by ex-Starsky and Hutch star Paul Michael Glaser, but it really falls down because Sweeney and Kelly obviously can’t skate for toffee. The on-ice sequences, choreographed by medal-winning Robin Cousins in an only-job-he’s-fit-for turn, employ doubles and tricky editing, which means the climactic struggle has to be quite literally skated over.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.