“I’ve been following this movie for about a year, ever since it premiered on the festival circuit. Co-written by and staring The Big Bang Theory’s Bernadette, Melissa Rauch, The Bronze is a foul mouthed comedy about a former Olympic gymnast dealing with an up and comer coming up in her hometown. Basically she’s the polar opposite of the role that’s made Rauch famous.
My interest in this movie was two fold. One, I do like this style of comedy, and the premise of this one intrigued me. The other was that I was excited to see Rauch play against type. I knew she’d have the comedic chops, so I wanted to see her tackle this character.
In truth, we ran into a big problem that we’ve encountered before. When your movie is led by an unlikeable character, well, frankly, it’s hard to like them. Our main charcater Hope was just too abrasive. And while yes, the conceit of an all American girl gymnast with a rather filthy potty mouth is funny, if you don’t like her enough to care about her, you don’t care too much about the movie. She did eventually get over the hump, but by then it was a little too late.
I don’t think we needed to tone down the profanity, it just should have been more clever. It was a lot of saying things for shock value and hoping to get a laugh out of them, but that only works for so long. While some beats were predictable, I did rather like the story. And Rauch was fantastic. Hopefully she gets another chance to branch out like this soon. It was a promising start, but like her character, she fell short of the gold.
The Bronze – \m/ \m/ \n”