The Cutting Edge

Although the movie follows the standard Hollywood formula of pictures dealing with athletic competition, it is snappily paced and unusually well acted. Read full review

The off-the-rink sequences bristle with as much passion and energy as the dazzling skating sequences, featuring some of the world’s greatest figure skaters. Read full review

Anyone expecting a movie dominated by figure skating will be disappointed. The Cutting Edge concentrates on its characters, with the skating limited to a supporting role. This is not a movie for cynics, nor for those who don't occasionally like to sit back and enjoy an undemanding, "comfortable" film. For unadulterated fun, The Cutting Edge may not earn a gold medal, but it's worth at least a bronze. Read full review

A genial if predictable romantic comedy about a couple of mismatched ice skaters who come together to try to win an Olympic medal in pairs figure skating. Oh, yes, they also fall in love. What results is sort of "Dirty Dancing on Ice," with Moira Kelly as a wealthy, spoiled, teenage ice princess with her own rink, and D.B. Sweeney as a rough-and-tumble hockey player at the end of his career. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser - yes, Starksy - directs cleanly, but the chemistry between the co-stars makes it work. [27 March 1992, p.C]

The Cutting Edge is a marriage of two durable Hollywood genres: It's an Underdog in Training sports film, crossed with that most beloved of all romantic formulas, the Incompatibles in Love. There is essentially not an original moment in the entire film, and yet it's skillfully made and well-acted. Read full review

Except for the two stars, not much is believable in the movie. The ice skating sequences are clearly hampered by Sweeney's lack of skill, and it's crushingly obvious when a skating double has slipped into the picture. He's the guy who never looks at the camera. Read full review

Clearly designed to be a family entertainment, THE CUTTING EDGE has a by-the-numbers quality that's only partly concealed by smooth production values and consistent--if uninspiring--performances. Read full review

The Cutting Edge is certainly inoffensive enough, with the exception of a scene in which Doug teaches Kate to loosen up by taking her out to drink shots-a cliche that doesn`t need perpetuating. But if the studio didn`t have enough faith in the movie to release it until well after the Winter Games, the reason probably has something to do with the movie`s lack of faith that an audience can accept anything beyond a 0.5 degree of difficulty. Read full review

The skating sequences are also well-thought out and fun to watch. The movie loses momentum at times with directionless subplots about Kate and her boring fiance, Doug and his family back home who think that taking up figure skating is tantamount to turning a gay blade and the manipulations of Kate's father whose vicarious attachments almost put a permanent hex on her life. Certainly, The Cutting Edge is a well-timed vehicle for those who couldn't get enough of the Winter Olympics on TV, but it pushes past simple opportunism to deliver a backstage story that works in any season. Read full review

Two fresh performances slip through the cliches of this hockey-player-meets-figure-skater romantic comedy. But for some viewers, that may not be enough. [27 March 1992, p.24]

Give the Olympic ice skating fantasy The Cutting Edge a so-so score of 5.2 on technical merit and a low 4.6 for artistic interpretation. This Rocky romance movie is lovely to watch and difficult to swallow. [27 March 1992, p.8]

It's hard to knock The Cutting Edge without feeling like a grouch. It aims to be nothing more than an old-fashioned love story with plenty of banter between its two leads and a straightforward plot about Olympic ice skating. The actors work hard...But the script rings false from the get-go; the dialogue is straight from the school of clever quips and snappy comebacks, and the romantic plotline has been done so many times before, it's beyond cliched. It's too flimsy to carry a whole movie. [27 March 1992, p.G13]

Yes, you've seen this movie a hundred times before, and "The Cutting Edge" is even more annoying than most predictable sports movies because it was so obviously shot on the cheap: the overall production values are as low as any film released by a major studio this year. [27 March 1992]

The Cutting Edge is a sharp-looking but rinky-dink rink romance that would earn 6.0's in compulsory cliches. [27 March 1992, p.4D]

The flashy skate-level camera techniques that conceal the actors' inadequacies on ice can't compare with a full-figure view of a championship-quality long program. An ''undoable'' medal-winning move that is pivotal to the plot is never clearly explained or depicted. And movie histrionics can't approximate the drama of real competition. [27 March 1992, p.D7]

There's probably a good film to be made about the judgmental world of figure skating, but The Cutting Edge isn't it. Nor does it try to be. Instead, it's the sort of movie that aims low - somewhere in the region of competent pulp - and pretty much hits the mark. [31 March 1992]

If there were a special Academy Award for Contrived Premise, this picture would be a hot favourite to scoop the statuette. Read full review

A lobotomised ice-skating obsessive (since many of the skating sequences are choreographed by former Olympic gold medallist Robin Cousins) might find something praiseworthy in all this predictable, ham-fisted, romantic tosh. Read full review

This movie's "Flashdance" on blades, an unending series of rock videos posing as a story. It's so slick, so loveless, so efficient, you almost take your hat off to the filmmakers. Read full review

The Cutting Edge plays like the kind of date movie written by a computer, and not a very smart one...It makes shaved ice look deep. [27 March 1992, p.29]

A premise is about all The Cutting Edge has, and what a tired one it is. Read full review