Why The Cutting Edge still holds a gold medal in movie history

The D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly romantic comedy, The Cutting Edge, still gets a perfect 10. Here’s why no other rom-com does it quite like this one.

It’s been 27 years since movie fans were introduced to former hockey player Doug Dorsey (D.B. Sweeney) and temperamental figure skater Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly). But like a fine wine, The Cutting Edge has gotten better with age, going from a film that did okay at the box office to a cult favorite thanks to constant showings on TV.

Luckily, The Cutting Edge can now be streamed on Hulu, which means we all get a chance to watch one of the greatest romantic comedies over again.

And if (for some reason) you still haven’t seen it yet, then you’ve missed out, as we’ll explore in this week’s Deeper Cut.

These days, you’re more likely to know Moira Kelly from her years as Karen Roe on One Tree Hill, or her brief one-season stint on The West Wing. D.B. Sweeney has guest-starred in dozens of TV shows and played the slightly hapless Terry Fitzgerald in the movie version of Spawn. But back in 1992, the two of them were still relatively early in their careers when they combined for a movie that it’s impossible not to love.

The Cutting Edge will not be compared to Romancing The Stone or When Harry Met Sally. It didn’t get a single award nomination. But it proved that a film doesn’t have to be critically acclaimed or commercially successful to be a success — it just has to be a movie that people truly, deeply enjoy. That’s what makes it great.

A straightforward romantic comedy with a unique setting — the world of competitive figure skating circa the 1992 Winter Olympics — this is one of those films where everything just goes exactly the way it should. You don’t have to know anything about skating or hockey to get it, but that story makes it different from couples “meeting cute” in coffee shops, blind dates, and all of those other tropes.

And Doug and Kate definitely don’t “meet cute.” They walk into each other in a hallway four years earlier at the 1988 Winter Olympics, not knowing that both of their lives are about to change forever. He suffers a head injury that ends his hockey career; her partner drops her and ruins their routine, although the script reveals later that there’s more to that story than meets the eye.

The only thing these two have in common is a desire for redemption. They were representing their country at the highest possible level, and they both were almost there. So it makes perfect sense that they’d come together, even if it takes a hard shove from Kate’s no-nonsense coach Anton Pamchenko (the late Tony Award winner Roy Dotrice). Their characters naturally mesh, unlike so many other projects where the situation feels too good to be true.

The Cutting Edge is also smart in that it gives Doug and Kate their own stories, rather than just one story about the two of them together and then eventually being together. It doesn’t discount them as individuals to make them a couple.

Doug has to learn a new sport and also defend it from the prejudices of his family and friends who don’t think a tough guy should be figure skating. Kate has a difficult relationship with her father Jack (Terry O’Quinn of future Lost fame), who hovers over her after the death of her mother and thinks she’s perfect — but also expects her to be perfect. They both have to grow, and that gets as much screen time as any romantic tension.

Last but not least, the two leads genuinely work well together. Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney have actual chemistry that naturally encourages the audience to root for them. It’s not like the modern romantic comedies where Hollywood sticks two big names together for box office appeal then the film expects an audience will support them as a couple.

The Cutting Edge has a duo who are both funny, intriguing and it’s obvious on screen that they enjoy playing off one another. Sweeney and Kelly have both done a lot of work since, but this movie is still one of their best performances.

Gilroy’s script doesn’t pack in many surprises. There’s the one about what really happened to Kate and another when the duo competes at U.S. Nationals. Instead, he lets the characters lead the plot and tells a story that rests on their shoulders. The audience knows where the film is going, but it’s better that way because it’s where we want to go.

Even the characters who wind up being secondary to that story still have their due. Kate comes into the picture with a fiancé, Hale (Dwier Brown), who unsurprisingly is the anti-Doug: a white-collar nice guy who works in finance. Of course Hale gets dumped, but he’s actually the one who figures out Kate’s feelings before she does. He knows what’s going on, and handles it well. H’s not the boorish boyfriend whose sole purpose is to get out of the way.

Then there’s Lorie (Rachelle Ottley), a slightly airheaded blonde who’s working with Kate’s old partner Brian (Kevin Peeks) and throws herself at Doug. She doesn’t get much screen time, but she serves an important purpose. Lorie is the kind of woman Doug would normally go for, yet in seeing her versus Kate, he — and the audience — can see why Kate is who he needs to be with. And even though that’s the case, viewers don’t hate Lorie. They just don’t want her to win.

The Cutting Edge spends time building its entire universe so that the movie feels complete, and not like something pushed out of a mold. It has a full story to tell and characters who seem like real people, played by actors who click together naturally. There’s not much more you can ask for from a romantic comedy, and a lot of those elements have since fallen by the wayside.

What’s interesting about The Cutting Edge now is that you find more to appreciate about it than when it was originally released. The film was the screenwriting debut of Tony Gilroy, who’s now a well-known Hollywood writer and director of movies like Armageddon and the Bourne franchise. You may not have realized that director Paul Michael Glaser is the same Paul Michael Glaser who starred in Starsky & Hutch. And Michael Hogan, who has a small role as the doctor in the movie, went on to star in a little hit series called Battlestar Galactica.

Perhaps the most telling thing about the film’s popular is that ABC Family took its intellectual property and created a series of made-for-TV movies starting in 2006. They’re not at all worth watching, as none of the original actors appear nor do they even come close to capturing the spirit of the original. But that just proves how hard it is to create the kind of magic that The Cutting Edge generated in 1992. Even now, the mere mention of the movie makes one smile — something that will always make it a gold medalist in our hearts.

The Cutting Edge is available to stream on Hulu. Find the latest Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.