Just in time for Olympic gold, I watched a movie called The Bronze which IS about an Olympic athlete. It’s a movie you didn’t even notice came out earlier this year because the studio kind of made sure you didn’t. It’s about a female gymnast who hurt her ankle during her run for the gold and still managed to complete her set but could only manage a bronze. Ten years later, she’s living with her dad (Gary Cole), wears her USA warm-ups all the time, and sponges off the community for her faded glory when not stealing money out of her dad’s US Mail truck.
It stars Melissa Rouche – aka Bernadette from Big Bang Theory – who also wrote the script. She gave herself a mean, arrogant, stupid character to play and she has fun with it. I suspect that, since she’s not a big star, the studio didn’t trust a mean-spirited, dirty female character to star in a movie that would normally be ok for a guy. Or maybe it’s just not a good movie.
I liked it though. It’s not great but I was amused by it and kind of liked the character once she started warming up (and found her filthy mouth and comments pretty funny usually).
This is either a warning or not but there’s a genuinely surprising sex scene between two elastic gymnasts that’s about as graphic as you can get and still get an R rating. A lot of the naughty bits are in shadow…. but it’s still pretty eye-opening (and athletic).
So, yeah, a pretty decent movie. I’ve seen a lot worse and if you don’t mind some raunch in a movie that could probably have been called Bad Olympian, you might dig it too.
Or, you know, you could watch the Olympics instead.
Score: 77