The Bronze straddles a low bar

Movie review: The Bronze

Melissa Rauch’s send-up of competitive gymnastics includes an acrobatic sex scene and cartoonish characters in tracksuits, but lacks the gritty heart required for a sports movie — even an insincere one

The Bronze

2.5/5

Starring: Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Haley Lu Richardson, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Cecily Strong

Directed by: Bryan Buckley

Running time: 108 minutes

MPAA Rating: Restricted

By Katherine Monk

As uncomfortable and awkward as a spread-eagled fall onto a balance beam, The Bronze keeps you watching out of sheer curiosity. It’s the same tingle that travels up a rubbery neck when passing a car crash, a crushing sense of gratitude mingled with gory caution.

You remember the images, but don’t quite know where to put them as they sidle towards guilt, and scurry close to embarrassment.

How else to describe the pathos of watching Hope (Melissa Rauch), a former Olympic gymnast who refuses to pass the torch to the next generation, and clings to her moment of glory? Hope won the affection of her small Ohio town when she fought through pain and landed a routine on a ruptured Achilles to win a bronze medal.

For years, she cruised on her fame, getting free drinks and sportswear. But the good will wore thin years ago. She’s become a selfish locust on the landscape, and every time her dad tries to push her into accepting adulthood, she pushes the pity button and cries over her dead mother.

Hope is shamelessly manipulative. She is also so desperate to be recognized, she still wears her aging Olympic tracksuit.

In short, she’s pathetic, but she’s such an exaggerated version of humanity and celebrity sports culture that she becomes a cartoon.

And that’s really what The Bronze feels like: A live-action cartoon starring Rauch (Big Bang Theory) as a washed-up gymnast doing foul things, which is funny for all of five minutes. But this is a feature film, not a Saturday Night Live sketch – or a Super Bowl ad.

Director Bryan Buckley has never made a feature film before, but he has directed over 50 spots that aired during the big game, and you can feel the mechanism of his internal clock trying to adjust from nanoseconds to extended scenes.

You can also feel his inability to direct the actors and find the right comic tone. Rauch is a talent, and while her performance is certainly convincing and highly acrobatic, Hope is a flat, rather joyless character to follow for the duration.

Even when they concoct a moronic plot about a potential inheritance and throw in a smarmy ex-boyfriend looking to humiliate our Hope, the movie spins in self-satisfying circles until it gets dizzy and falls flat on its face.

Rauch and her husband Winston collaborated on the script that’s trying to skewer everything from licensed merchandize to the exploitation of minors in the name of patriotic glory, and while they fill the balloon with comic content, the delivery of the material is so prickly and mean, all the good will leaks out with a sad, high-pitched squeal.

The most memorable scene is the much-talked about sex session – an acrobatic feat of carnal choreography that explores a variety of mounts and dismounts featuring Rauch and co-star Sebastian Stan. But like everything else in The Bronze, it feels far too contrived to elicit more than an “Oh my! A naked tumbling routine ending with the splits…”

Cameos from the likes of Olga Korbut and Dominique Dawes will go a long way towards giving the film some legit credibility with the gymnastics crowd, but anyone who really loves gymnastics culture will probably be offended by the snarky, condescending and altogether bitter tone.

This is not Blades of Glory on the apparatus because Hope is no Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell) or Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder). Her softer, sympathetic side is entirely absent until the final act, which means we’re essentially watching her abuse everyone in her field of vision for a good hour until the plot offers a sliver of redemption.

Some people will no doubt enjoy watching innocents tormented by a selfish meanie wearing a red, white and blue hair scrunchie, but without any good will, accessible characters or any semblance of kindness, The Bronze is limited to a low place on the podium.

@katherinemonk

THE EX-PRESS, March 20, 2016

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Review: The Bronze

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Summary

2.5Score

Melissa Rauch stars as a spoiled brat gymnast who won a bronze medal on a ruptured Achilles. She was America's sweetheart, but now, over a decade later, she refuses to pass the torch to the next generation. Only the temptation of a windfall inheritance forces Hope to grow up and accept responsibility for her life, but by that point, the mean-spiritedness of the film and its cartoonish characters has already worn thin. -- Katherine Monk

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