quote of the day (August 18, 2008)

Gymnastics is one of those sports that become super-important to the average American every four years, and then pretty much resides along figure skating as programming that networks run against the NFL when they don't have football television rights.

Despite that fact, there are a couple of excellent examples of gymnasts who were able to parlay their fleeting Olympic glories onto the big screen.

The first one, is American Anthem, starring such lumnaries as 1984 Olympic gymnastics champion Mitch Gaylord and Janet Jones (aka Mrs. Wayne Gretzky). It has a stellar 2.4 out of 10 user rating on IMDB.com, just barely missing the cut for the bottom 100 movies in history (the cut starts at 2.3 out of 10). Some of the movies that did make the cut included Paris Hilton's The Hottie and the Nottie (rating of 1.6), From Justin to Kelly (1.7), and Gigli, Kazaam, It's Pat, and Battlefield Earth, all of which scored 2.3.

His mullet's start value is 7.5, much higher than his Chinese competitors...

That's not the point, though. We were discussing American Anthem. Let's do a better job of staying on track, shall we? Gaylord plays an angsty ex-gymnast (look how rebellious he is--he's wearing a leather jacket! with no shirt!!) who has dropped his Olympic hopes due to an injury. Jones' beauty inspires him back, and he spends most of the rest of the movie training for his comeback, including a Rocky IV-like moment when he constructs a high bar between two trees behind his house. He then proceeds to practice on the high bar even during thunderstorms, which just can't be safe. Mitch Gaylord laughs at lightning. And nuanced acting.

For some reason, St. Clare of Assisi, the Official Grade School of QOTD, showed our class this movie at some point. Knowing what I know now, it was probably almost summer vacation and the teachers were sick of dealing with us. It seemed cheesy then, so I'm sure it'd be even more dreadful now. But for those in the vast QOTD audience who want to get their gymnastics fix after the Beijing olympics have come and gone, um, this would not be a good choice for you.

From Walter Goodman's June 27, 1986 review of the movie for The New York Times: "Part of the time, especially for bizarrely lighted romantic moments, Steve and Julie appear to have been dipped in olive oil...This whole movie may have been concocted on a synthesizer." (that damn liberal media hates it when an American athlete wins a gold medal. Especially a rebellious one with a mullet and a leather jacket!)

TOMORROW on QOTD: we feature another gymnastics-related movie, this time involving karate and rogue nations!