The Bronze’ Review,Melissa Rauch Sticks It With Sharp Olympics ,Has-Been Satire

The Bronze’ Review,Melissa Rauch Sticks It With Sharp Olympics ,Has-Been Satire

Melissa Rauch (The Big Bang Theory) stars (and co-wrote the film with husband Winston Rauch) as Hope Ann Gregory, a former gymnast who made her own brand of history a decade earlier when she helped Team USA score the bronze, even while performing her routine with a ruptured Achilles. Cut to 10 years later and she is still dining out on that bit of minor celebrity and 15 minutes of fame in her all-American hometown of Amherst, Ohio, where she is still pretty hot stuff — at least compared to other townsfolk. She still lives in the basement of the home of her Dad (Gary Cole) and wears her Olympics jumpsuit while always re-watching her moment of triumph on a well-worn VHS tape. As any celeb worth their salt, she also hits the local mall expecting freebies just for showing up

 Clearly she has honed this game to a science and is comfortable in her own sneakers. However, when she is forced to help train Maggie, a new and very promising Olympic hopeful, Hope’s status as the city’s only celebrity could be threatened. Does she do her job or try to sabotage the young woman’s dreams

As I say in my video review above, this is the kind of broad but smart small-town character study that made films like Smile and Election so dead-on funny and, in their own way, truthful. Hope is a kind of pathetic character who dwells on one shining moment and lets the rest of life pass her by. As played by Rauch she is unapologetic and somewhat scheming, not a terribly sympathetic person for an audience to hang their hat on. In that way this clever slice-of-life comedy takes risks, but ultimately we do have some empathy for her, especially when she starts to take her new training gig seriously