The Cutting Edge

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, The Cutting Edge follows professional hockey player Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) as he’s forced to retire from the game after suffering a career-ending injury – with this development eventually leading him into the world of competitive figure skating, where he reluctantly partners up with Moira Kelly’s high-strung Kate Moseley. Filmmaker Glaser, working from Tony Gilroy’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced and mostly engaging romance that benefits rather substantially from the affable work of its stars, as both Sweeney and Kelly manage to transform their decidedly one-dimensional characters into sympathetic, appealing figures for whom one can’t help but root (and it doesn’t hurt, certainly, that the actors’ chemistry together is both palpable and irresistible). And although the picture’s been suffused with a whole host of questionable elements, including a hopelessly predictable narrative and a barrage of less-than-welcome stylistic touches (eg there’s just so much choppy slo-mo), The Cutting Edge ultimately can’t help but come off as a thoroughly agreeable romcom that holds up remarkably well all these years later.

*** out of ****