I don’t watch The Big Bang Theory, so I was unfamiliar with Melissa Rauch before I saw her lead performance in The Bronze, which earns the mild distinction of being the best movie ever about gymnastics. As foul-mouthed as this comedy is, it sticks surprisingly close to the formula of sports films about spoiled athletes who learn humility by becoming coaches. This makes it less groundbreaking than it wants to be, either as a sports flick or as a female-centric raunchy comedy. Still, it does have enough modest accomplishments to make it worth a look.
Rauch portrays Hope Ann Greggory, who was briefly America’s sweetheart as a teen in 2004 when she won a bronze medal at an international sports event by completing a gymnastics routine on a ruptured Achilles tendon à la Kerri Strug. Her little hometown in Ohio is still proud of her, even though she has become an entitled, embittered, emotionally stunted disaster zone who mooches free meals at the local Sbarro, snorts Oxy, trawls bars for sex with strange men, and treats everyone like crap, including her mailman dad (Gary Cole), whom she lives with. She’s finally forced to act like an adult human when her estranged former coach commits suicide and leaves her a small fortune on the condition that Hope take over the training of her prize pupil, “Mighty Maggie” Townsend (Haley Lu Richardson), a nationally ranked sensation who comes from the same Ohio town and has a chance to eclipse Hope’s accomplishments.
The 35-year-old star co-wrote the script with her husband Winston Rauch, and they chose their subject cannily — when you’re 4’11”, “Olympic gymnast” is one role you can play that not many other actors can. The wholesome image of gymnastics is an easy target, too, and Hope contrasts sharply with the naively upbeat Maggie, who worships her coach and idol no matter how badly she’s treated. There’s a potentially fruitful subplot between Maggie’s devious mom (Cecily Strong) and Hope’s gold medalist ex-boyfriend Lance (Sebastian Stan, too tall for a gymnast but genuinely nasty), who’s trying to poach Maggie as a student. Rauch, speaking in a glass-shattering Midwestern drawl, plays Hope’s awfulness for all she’s worth.
Yet the movie stubbornly refuses to take flight in its first half. The script too often mistakes cursing and diva behavior for humor and doesn’t find the laughs in its antiheroine’s dysfunction like Bridesmaids, Trainwreck, or Young Adult, which this movie most closely resembles. The early gambit when Hope tries to prematurely end Maggie’s career by letting her date boys and gorge on sugar and fat is a blown opportunity. Maggie emerges from that no different than before. The movie does better when it ventures into physical comedy, like in a later bit when Hope tutors Maggie on faking enthusiasm for the judges’ benefit (“I’m bouncing! I’ve never had so much fun bouncing!”), and you wish the filmmakers had let it go on longer.
When Hope belatedly starts trying to grow up, the film gains traction. The lost look that comes over her when a tic-laden gym owner (Thomas Middleditch) tries to take her on a proper romantic date shows a glimpse of the damaged person she is underneath. Hope never takes off her 2004 Team USA warmup jacket, and it’s less a way of clinging to her past glory than a way of hiding her large breasts, which ended her gymnastics career early. First-time director Bryan Buckley executes an eye-catching shot during Maggie’s climactic floor exercise routine, as the camera ignores the performance and slowly tracks across the mat to Hope as she stands on the sideline, for once concentrating on something other than herself. The seriousness of these is cut with a late scene when Hope has a drunken relapse and hooks up with Lance. The movie mostly refrains from jokes about gymnast sex until this point, and, man, it’s spectacular.
(Two notes: One, the gymnastics here and elsewhere were performed by doubles, which is disappointing, though I guess real gymnasts couldn’t be found to act out these roles adequately. The other is, Lance sticks the dismount.)
The movie ends with a partially chastened Hope addressing her fellow Ohioans with a mix of solidarity and bitterness: “You fuckers remind me of who I am and what I can be.” It reminds us that The Bronze has a problematic relationship with small-town life, just like last week’s The Brothers Grimsby (and, for that matter, Young Adult). Still, considering how profoundly messed-up our main character is, the least sign of personal growth is something to hang onto. The movie ends with Hope taking her new young students out for ice cream. It’s counterproductive, but we can appreciate it.
[box_info]The Bronze
Starring Melissa Rauch and Haley Lu Richardson. Directed by Bryan Buckley. Written by Melissa and Winston Rauch. Rated R.[/box_info]
