Ice Angel

Am I a girl? I am a 31 year old male, but just recently films with a strong emotional base seem to have my British stiff upper lip trembling all over the place.

Has (in a strange parody with this film) a girlie girl figure skater possessed my body with the sole intention of applying the water works to my eyelids? It appears so, because this film really had me choked up with emotion, it was great.

Make no mistake, this film is a bit of a turkey, and when I say a bit I mean a Christmas dinner that can feed a small nation, but none the less there was something about it that made it impossible to switch over.

Matt Clark the strapping captain of the U.S.A. Olympic ice hockey team, meets a premature demise but is returned to earth in the body of Sarah Bryan, a U.S.A. Olympic figure skater.

We start out with the usual gender bender clichés as the bewildered Matt tries to adapt to the body of a young and beautiful woman, but it is when this former 6 footer starts to take figure skating seriously the film starts to come into it's own.

Nicolle Tom I feel plays her part so well, even adapting her walk to be consistent with that of a male hockey player, which of course is in direct contrast to the thing of beauty she undoubtedly is.

I was really surprised with myself when in the final scene, I found myself cheering at my TV with the rest of the Olympic crowd with layers of built up tears in my eyes. It was fantastic though. A real feel-good moment.

When I think of how soft I seem to be getting lately.....I could blush really.

The biggest problem with this film however was the ending. There was no fanfares or fade outs, not even those silly little captions explaining what happened next. There was nothing. It just stopped dead. As dead as Matt Clark himself.

There was so many lose ends the audience was so desperate to see tied, like any further interaction between Matt's 'widowed' pregnant girlfriend and his best friend, who had both figured out that their former comrade and pal was locked inside Sarah's body.

Maybe just one outward reference to it would have put the icing on the cake. But sadly we are left hungry.

Well to recap, the film is enjoyable although it's not that good, the ending will excite you and then disappoint you in the same minute and I'm a big sissy girl, who can't keep his emotions in check.

And I'm going to end this review in the same style as the film where by I am going to......

No this movie isn't the best I've ever seen, but it is cute and has a unique story line.. The tie ins and ending of the movie are great even if slightly predictable. I would recommend this movie as a sit at home no date Saturday night movie, just for the fun of it.

I saw this movie on Channel 5 while flicking through to see what was on, and normally, if a program is absolutly terrible I'll get up and leave to do something more productive rather than sit there and suffer.

This film kept me seated though. I found it slightly hilarious and it had a pretty funny plotline which kept me captivated for the length of the film.

A little bit cheesy, yes, but it was entertaining. I gave it a 9 out of ten for a nice afternoon movie that didn't make me cringe with boredom or cheesed off with rubbish jokes.

A nice little film with good acting by Nicholle Tom.

I thought this film, though pretty much the same as many other body switching films, was good fun. It was easy to watch, and didn't require any real thought on the viewers part. Nicholle Tom was brilliant in the part of Sarah, and even thought there was no major Hollywood talent to make it a hit, it's worth watching just for the Feel Good factor.

For years I've watch all the figure skating movies I'e come upon. This one has become my favorite. It goes beyond the story of a skating career and casts an amused but compassionate glance on the human condition.

It is surprising with all the modern interest in unconventional sexual themes that movies where the member of one sex experiences the life of another are so uncommon. I don't mean transvestite stories like TOOTSIE, but plots wherein a person undergoes a real change. This gives a film a real chance to explore sex roles, a theme ostensibly so important to modern consciousness. There have been some such films, but these have been shallow comedies going for simpleminded yucks, like "Dr. Jeckyll and Ms Hyde" and "Switch" that really have nothing to say about the being a better humanbeing. Wouldn't it be better to address ideas of courage, compassion, and resilience in the face of difficulty? I thought Sarah's story of coming to grips with a new kind of life, of making peace with the past and moving on to the future, of friendship and striving to excel, made the story as warm as it was funny.

In criticism, it was too bad that the film didn't deal more with Sarah's social adjustments and less with skate training. Time to do so could have been salvaged from, for instance, that street hockey scene that was pretty much a throwaway. I think Ms Tom was a little too mature for the way the role was written and an actress who looked the age of Tara Lipinski would have been more suitable. Nonetheless, Tom does a good job and it is a shame that she doesn't get the chance to do more movie work (It is also a shame that her NANNY role was so restricted, and she was never allowed to break out of the background, as Nikki Cox did in UNHAPPY EVER AFTER).

Like "Heaven Can Wait," "Ice Angel" is clearly inspired by the classic "Here Comes Mr. Jordan." I hold it is superior to the former movie in thought and content, though shot on a small budget.

I'm amused by Nancy Kerrigan fans (which I count myself one)who express the wish for more screen time for our star. The few lines she had in the movie showed her limitations in delivering a dramatic line. She is a wonderful skater, but not an actress. Tara Lipinski did much better as the second lead.