The Bronze (2015) Oh my, what a perfect movie to sit through in the midst of the ongoing trainwreck shitshow laughingly known as the 2022 Winter Olympics......
Unlike other folks, we passed up viewing the sorry spectacle of a young Russian figure skater allowed to compete even though she'd been doped up to her eyeballs in heart medications.
And seriously, we don't know why anyone would think's they'd see a fair and honest sporting competition conducted within a nightmarish authoritarian Mordor of a country like China.
Therefore, in the true Olympic spirit, we watched this scrappy, deliberately nasty little dramady about Hope Ann Greggory, an embittered young ex-Olympian gymnast (Melissa Rauch) whose career was cut short by crippling injury.
Now back at home living with her long suffering postman dad (Gary Cole) Hope needily feeds off the fame left over from her brief moment in the sun, when she managed to win a Bronze medal as America's plucky, damaged sweetheart.
With a chance to score a $500,000 inheritance from her recently deceased gym coach, Hope agrees to coach Maggie (Haley Lu Richardson) a new sweet innocent gymnast with Olympic dreams. She undertakes this task much to the derision and disapproval of her one time Olympic nemesis, Gold medalist Lance (Sebastian Stan), who now supervises the American gymnastic team.
Melissa Rauch (of "The Big Bang Theory") works extra hard at establishing Hope as a raunchy, suffer-no-fools, nymphomaniacal whirlwind and it's a long ragged, rocky road to her ultimate redemption. By the time the film gets around to humanizing her a little, you may not care one way or the other.
But there are a few things to enjoy here along the way, The charming and adorable Richardson provides a welcome relief from Rauch's overbearing, way overdone badass theatrics. And the film does serve up at least one comedic highpoint - when Hope and Lance give in to their animal attraction and indulge in a night of literally Olympic sex.....complete with backflips, handstands and a variety of body bending acrobatics. Startling funny stuff.
Not quite ready for prime time, but there's no dull moments and we appreciated the film's targeting the whole Olympic experience as nothing but a glorified showbiz hustle. And it's certainly more honest and above board than that catastrophic calamity going on in China. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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