I was feeling a little less than attentive in the afternoon yesterday so i figured I would go for something a bit more light-hearted for my viewing and scrolled the comedy section of my Netflix. At first I was disappointed because there wasn't even very much to choose from outside of Adam Sandler movies and I have already seen all of those.
Then I saw "The Bronze" standing there, which is a story about a Olympian who won the bronze medal and returned to her hometown a hero only to years later still be riding the wave of fame and taking advantage of all the city's inhabitants going so far as to abuse them including her own father who has been paying her way through life since she stopped competing.
I thought I had never heard of Melissa Rauch who plays the lead role of Hope Greggory (in the film) but as it turns out she is actually "Bernadette" from The Big Bang Theory. I only found this out after the fact and wow did they do a good job making her not look or sound like Burnadette at all. She still has the same voice of course but not as high pitched and intentionally annoying as it was on BBT.
She is also a lot slimmer and a lot less "top heavy" if you know what I mean. She has a thick mid-western accent, a very bad attitude, an old-school haircut that she refuses to change, and a very foul mouth.
[src](https://media1.fdncms.com/stranger/imager/u/original/23722730/bronze.png)Whenever she leaves the house she only wears here USA Olympics warm-up suit everywhere that she goes and she basically just treats everyone terribly even though they are all still admonishing her for something she achieved many years prior and actually suffered a career-ending injury because of it.
She is completely self-centered and treats especially her father (played by Gary Cole - who I've loved ever since he played Bill Lumbergh in Office Space) and she generally has no aspirations in life until one day it is announced on the news that her Olympic coach has died.
It is at this point that she learns that her coach has offered to give her an inheritance of $500,000 if she will help and train a young Olympic hopeful that is from the same small town that she is from. Obviously, she doesn't actually want this young girl to succeed because she feels as though if the new girl does succeed will steal her thunder and fame.
Because she is self-centered anyway, she takes on the role of coach, but only for the money.
[src](https://teaser-trailer.com/wp-content/uploads/The-Bronze-Movie-2016.jpg)I think it takes a special sort of sense of humor and also an appreciation for sports films in order to appreciate this movie though because the humor is crude and very low-brow and is basically the opposite of Big Bang and this makes Raunch's involvement and performance all the more impressive.
[src](https://i0.wp.com/macguff.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/The-Bronze-Movie-Header-Image.jpg?fit=630%2C400&ssl=1)There are a couple of "big" names in the film aside from Raunch and Cole and at least for me, this makes the overall film budget of $3.5 million pretty impressive to me. I've seen lessor films that were made for far more money and this kind of makes me feel as though films might be a massive money-laundering scheme in a lot of situations.
Unfortunately for The Bronze the film absolutely bombed and wasn't even in very many theaters and I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the critics in this respect because I found the movie funny, exciting, and engaging for the entire 90 minutes of runtime. Like I said, I think it takes a certain type of person to appreciate this sort of humor and maybe that kind of person is you as well.
Should I watch it?
I think that most people would probably agree with the critics on this one and get bored and not find it funny but I guess that I am from a different camp and find this sort of humor hilarious and I am also a big fan of sports films. Therefore, if you are like me I think you will enjoy this almost universally-panned film that very few people are even aware exists. I think you should give it a go, especially if you consider that there isn't much to choose from as far as comedies are concerned on Netflix at the moment.
