Following an accident in competition, Jackie Dorsey (Christy Carlson Romano) is determined to return to skating.
As with her parents, she finds herself paired with Alex Harrison (Ross Thomas), a professional skate-boarder.
Will they work out their differences so they can win Olympic Gold?
The Cutting Edge 2 is not a good movie. It repeats the outline of the original and smooths out all the rough edges - this means no cruel put-downs.
Ironically, this movie fixes one of my chief gripes with the original - good skating footage. The filmmakers put the camera down in wide shots and let the action play out so we can watch the skaters complete moves.
The character of Jackie Dorsey is a rough facsimile of her mom - fixated on skating, and a bit of a snob (her reaction when she sees Alex working at the hotel).
In an update that feels straight out of Airborn, her partner is a professional skater - as with the original, there is a class conflict, although that is dropped as soon as it arises.
This movie’s thesis seems to be that Doug (Scott Thompson Baker) and Kate’s (Stepfanie Kramer) union was not the garbage fire it seemed to be set up to be. Instead they have created a child who has repeated the same patterns of behavior as her parents. However since this is a TV movie, Jackie is not as caustic as that equation implies.
It is worth emphasizing that Doug and Kate in this movie bear almost no resemblance to the characters from the original movie - they are both well-adjusted and understanding presences in the background, ready to lend a helping hand. ‘Almost’ until Doug tosses Alex into the shower when he finds him hungover and vomiting after an all-nighter.
The movie also continues the original’s trend of a soundtrack of crappy songs - the worst is a terrible ripoff of Sir Mixalot’s ‘Baby Got Back’.
This movie is bland and forgettable. However, when juxtaposed with the first movie, there are some elements that I felt improved on the original.
For one, the movie features more of a down beat before the third act: Alex catches Jackie give an interview in which she is evasive about returning to singles competition.
Believing he is expendable, he thinks about quitting before deciding to sabotage their long program by forcing Jackie to perform the move which caused her injury over and over again. It is a bleaker turn than anything in the original. That being said, it is negated by how quickly they get back together.
As a sports movie, this is more successful - we get more coverage of their routines and Jackie’s injury provides an obstacle they have to work over.
So it has that going for it.
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