After receiving a letter from her former trainer, Hope Ann, a young smart gymnastics girl, who acquires fame but lives out of fame in her small town, her life turns upside down, when she trains talented gymnastics and wins a lot of money.
The plot is beyond basic and the dialogue so crude it almost feels like an R-rated cartoon. Still, The Bronze has a loony Napoleon Dynamite-meets-Talladega Nights-on-the-balance-beam charm.
There are some decent laughs here (especially for a well choreographed sex scene) and even an amusing soundtrack, but there's just not enough story to go around.
[The Bronze has] a tendency not to create a universe and drama, but to impose events, however unlikely and incongruous they may be, to fulfill a pre-determined arc.
The Bronze often feels like an extended skit, but Hope is so refreshingly unladylike and the movie is so refreshingly cynical about gymnastics that the results are surprisingly amusing.
I wouldn't want to live next to Hope, but it is fascinating to watch her. And every so often it's refreshing to have a movie that dares to say - you know, no matter what all the screenwriting gurus tell you, some characters never change.
If there are a few sweet moments between Rauch and Middleditch here, they're all but erased by an ineffectual story... and an admittedly impressive void of genuine laughs.
Rauch's character could easily be too cutesy, too cruel, or just too annoying if played by another actress. But audiences will love her particular brand of arrested development.
