DVD Review: The Cutting Edge - Chasing the Dream

Posted by Kevin Carr (kevin@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 24, 2008

I will admit that I have a soft spot for The Cutting Edge. It is one of my wife’s favorite movies, and we had seen it on a date way back when we were in college. I never had a chance to see the second film, although I suppose missing that one is not as devastating to the series as missing The Empire Strikes Back. (I can assure you, though, that my wife DVR’d the film when it was on television.)

Now they’ve made a second sequel, The Cutting Edge: Chasing the Dream. This film’s storyline mines a lot of its plot devices from the first film. Champion figure skater Zack Conroy (Matt Lanter) has accidentally injured his doubles partner and needs to find a new one quickly. The problem he has is that no one in the figure skating world wants to deal with him.

Zack ends up running into a hot young amateur ice hockey player named Alexandra Delgado (Francia Raisa) who takes him up on the challenge. Zack must help train her so they can win the gold medal, but he also has to deal with his growing feelings for her. Christy Romano reprises her role from The Cutting Edge 2 as their new coach.

As far as direct-to-DVD sequels go, this isn’t bad. It’s definitely not as fresh of a film as the original, and it does sample the plot points a little too much. (To be honest, my wife was the one who noticed this more than I did considering I haven’t seen the film in about 15 years.) However, since it’s got the unique element of figure skating as the backdrop, things don’t get too tired too fast.

The roles are reversed from the first film, with the guy as the hard-to-handle figure skater and the girl as the hockey player with a chip on her shoulder. And to this degree, it works as a different film. Lanter and Raisa have decent chemistry, although Raisa is much more friendly to the camera. Lanter’s character comes off too much as a jerk and whiner at times.

If you’re a fan of the first film and don’t mind a little retreading on the premise, this might make a good date film. Don’t expect perfect theatrical quality, but it’s better constructed than most video-based releases I’ve seen lately.

The DVD comes with a 12-minute making-of featurette that gives a nice backdrop but does focus a little too much on Christy Romano (who was really somewhat minor in the movie). There’s also a handful of deleted scenes to fill things out.

THE UPSIDE: Better than most direct-to-DVD sequels.

THE DOWNSIDE: Retreads some old plot points.

ON THE SIDE: Francia Raisa was in another direct-to-DVD sequel recently: Bring It On: All Or Nothing.

| | Read more articles by Kevin Carr