Duplass Brothers Productions,
Melissa Rauch, Gary Cole, Thomas Middleditch, Sebastian Stan, Cecily Strong, Haley Lu Richardson
Hope (Melissa Rauch) was an Olympic gymnast who comes from a small town, but an injury ended her career and left her with a Bronze medal and with the love and adoration of the folks in her little town. She’s a minor celebrity and never got beyond that. Now she lives with her single Dad (Gary Cole) and makes like life a living hell trying to meet all her diva demands. She hasn’t forgiven her ex-coach, who now has a new upcoming gymnast which doesn’t make Hope very happy, but when her ex-coach suddenly dies, leaving a fortune for Hope is she will simply become “Coach Hope” and bring this new girl to the Olympics, begrudgingly she agrees to try. It’s not going to be pretty.
This is really a vehicle for Melissa Rauch (who you probably know as Bernadette from The Big Bang Theory) but the rest of the team is pretty good too. Gary Cole is very long suffering as the bullied Dad and his performance is top notch. Cecily Strong is the new girls Mom, and though she doesn’t have a lot of screen time, she does a good job every time she appears. All in all the story is really simple, like a Will Farrell or Ben Stiller type movie, but certainly the thing that makes this film so much fun is the wonderful bitchiness Melissa brings to every single scene. She gives a good job when her character is very angry in the Big Bang Theory too, but here she has free reign to play the nasty card to the hilt, and she does. Not a masterpiece by any means, but this is a really good film, and really funny. It’s off the wall in it’s humor, and catches you off guard, but it is really hilarious most of the time.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
