Starring: Missy Peregrym, Jeff Bridges and Vanessa Lengies
Directed by Jessica Bendinger
A young delinquent ex-gymnast has a run-in with the law and is forced to choose between going to juvie or training for a big gymnastic competition with Jeff Bridges. Amazing premise! I can't say that it was bad. It was just a typical teeny-bopper silly movie. It did have some nice heavy metal music, which was quite surprising.
At first I was like, "Why did JB do this movie?", and, well, I still am. I read that his decision to do this movie had a lot to do with the fact that he has three young daughters, so I guess he wanted to do a movie for them. JB plays Burt Vickerman, a legendary gymnastics coach. This movie is one of the reasons I wanted to to this study. I wanted to see how great actors dealt with not-so-great material. I actually enjoyed JB's character, and his drive to make these girls better gymnasts. You can tell that he really put as much work and research into this role as he would any other role. Evidence of that is in this excerpt from an interview where he talks about finding his character.
Jeff Bridges-- “I went to a great meet here, it was a national meet. I must have looked quite peculiar because I had my video camera and all these girls doing these amazing things, and I’m videoing the coaches – their hands, how they move their feet. I got a lot out of that. Many ways of being a coach, what those guys look like. That’s what I was kind of hunting for in the early days there, to find out what was my coach going to be like.
I saw there were some coaches who probably never stepped in a gym in their lives. You know, the beer bellies and not particularly graceful. Probably in their youth they had some talent. But I also found out that coaches aren’t necessarily gymnasts themselves. Bela Karolyi was probably the most famous coach. He wasn’t a gymnast, he was a boxer. That was kind of interesting to find out. So I kind of picked and choosed. Of course, there were some coaches that were very fit and trim and looked like they could get up there and do the tricks themselves. I took bits and pieces and made my guy."
Full interview
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