The Bronze (2016)

Don't Believe the Hype

A Masterpiece!

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I am surprised that the movie flopped and received many bad reviews. In my opinion it was a really good movie.Melissa Rauch does a great job as the lead character. She is raunchy funny but she is not a one dimensional character and through her depth we see her also as a vulnerable, hurt and lost person.It is both a comedy and drama. And I like the balance between them. We laugh in between but the main parts of the movie are actually not all that funny and more emotional. I did laugh a lot, but I absolutely enjoyed watching Hope rediscovering her love for life, including the great confrontation scene with her father.The movie is better than most sports movies. It is not too sweet and written by the common formula. But it includes some good scenes related to the sport like for example the gymnastics sex scene.The ending also makes one happy. This is what we have been rooting through this movie and it is nice to see it happening.

I think this movie really missed it's target audience. While it is breath of foul mouthed air in the usually formulaic and insipid gymnastic movie genre, it goes too far with the raunch. I think if they had pared back the language and nudity to a PG-13 level and replaced it with more character development and heart, they could've been competing for the Gold. Okay, enough of the gymnastic metaphors. Some of this stuff was staring them in face. I mean, they create a central character who's totally self-centered, lacking in schooling and social skills. They could've given her a great scene and a large amount of redemption by revealing her Olympic training robbed her of childhood. She didn't get proper schooling, only had rivals, never friends, never learned how to relate to other people and because of her early victory, was never was allowed to grow up. It was right in front of them but they never go there. As a result Hope lacks depth and the movie doesn't really deliver a satisfying ending. Given that most gymnastic movies target girls who are of age to be learning gymnastics, the language goes too far and the sex scene while being sort of funny is way too graphic for a family with children to watch. They could've accomplished the same goals the movie strives for with a little less of the language and sex and a little more heart. Still, it's a good movie and a fun watch, it's just it could've been very good.

Not quite useful, just personal opinion.Good movie. In this movie I saw an American who loves her town deeply, a girl who finally wakes up and a woman who grows up.I have watched the movie for extra three times, not for the sex scenes (maybe), but to find out who is Bradley. :)

Contrary to the negativity of the title of my review, I found The Bronze to be both moving at times, and at other times funny. Not hilarious, but just funny in a surreal, this could never actually happen way. I give it 9 out of 10 at a time when interesting characters are just AWOL from the big screen.Not so with Hope. She is genuinely interesting in a kind of "hate her but can't stop thinking about her" way.The theme of this film has been done before many times. I prefer to liken it to The Wrestler than Blades of Glory. The film is definitely satirical, but not comic satire. It is much too gritty. Particularly for anyone who lives in small town Ohio (or any part of the country today) looking at the ghosts of their one-time dreams on the wall. Unlike a film like The Natural, where the washed up "wunderkind" comes riding in with a halo over his head to bail out the home town underdogs, in this film Hope rides in via the plush leather bucket seats of a "vintage" Buick, and clearly she has horns instead of a halo. That villainous exterior is what essentially makes her character so interesting.The problem is that in an attempt to sell this film to millennials, it has to transport this interesting, complex character to an episode of Family Guy, piling raunchy joke on top of raunchy joke. And as a result, for all it's brilliance, this is not the kind of R rated film you can every sit down and watch with even your teenage children. The sex scene is funny, but far to graphic (and needlessly). As are the many gratuitous sexual reference throughout the film and the non-nonchalant glorification of drugs.For a family comedy about a female protagonist trying desperately to hang on to some existential validation through past victory, and behaving badly in the process, I would recommend Butter. For a film you want to watch late at night when the kids are asleep, for the experience of periodically picking your jaw up off the ground, The Bronze delivers.