The Cutting Edge

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