My mother always says that things happen for a reason. Although I’ve always thought that my mom’s logic was somewhat skewed, I must say that after viewing the DVD for On Edge, I have to agree with her. There was definitely a reason why this movie never made it to the theatres - it’s ridiculously and horribly awful.
Shot in a mockumentary style á la This is Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman but lacking any of Christopher Guest’s flair for wit or satire, On Edge (directed by Karl Slovin) follows Professor Robinson (Chris Hogan) as he documents the cutthroat competition to win figure-skating regionals at a hole-in-wall skating arena run by Yuri Moskivin (John Glover), a Vodka-swilling Russian running from the Mob. The three skaters fighting for the championship are plus-sized Wendy Wodinski (Marissa Jaret Winokur), wrong-side of the tracks J.C. Cain (A.J. Langer), and bulimic, belligerent Veda Tilman (Barret Swatek), whose demanding mother Mildred (Wendie Malick) forces her to skate when she’d rather be at cooking school. Lending some commentary is Zamboni Phil (Jason Alexander, with a really bad Southern accent), who keeps an eye on the competition but is secretly rooting for Cain to take home the gold.
The cast of mostly B and C-list actors are playing roles that we’ve seen them in before: A.J. Langer’s troubled J.C. Cain is suspiciously similar to Rayanne in My So-Called Life, Wendie Malick’s Mildred Tilman has got shades of Just Shoot Me’s Nina Van Horn, and Kathie Griffith’s quick turn as a pathetic, over-the-hill skater parallels her work in just about every reality show that she’s been on. There are two (almost) exceptions; one is Jason Alexander, who despite this (and other) missteps can still be forgiven due his years on Seinfeld (although he is now officially on double secret probation). The other is the charming Marissa Jaret Winokur; while it’s hard to think of her in a role in which her weight was not the central issue surrounding her character (including her hit-turn in the original cast of the Broadway smash “Hairspray”), I think this says more about the entertainment industry than it does simply about this film.
On Edge tries to do for the world of figure skating what A Mighty Wind did for folk singing and Best in Show did for dog competitions – that is, brutally satirize it while still somehow giving it a playful nudge, if not of approval, than at least of acknowledgment. The problem is that unlike those films, On Edge brings us clichés that we’ve seen a million times before – twins that do the same routine! The girl with the demanding mother who dreams to do the opposite of what her mother wants! The Russian guy who drinks too much and has shady dealings with the Russian mafia! The guy who is repulsed – yet ultimately attracted – ...
