Raising the Bar

You know, you see these little films in the list and decide to give them a try, only to be disappointed. Somehow, with Raising the Bar, I did stick it out till the end, but it was dismal. The acting was so bad. And the energy was very low. I would not recommend it. There are plenty of other low budget movies that are a better use of time.

It is what it is; I enjoyed this movie but you shouldn't have too high expectations for it. Most of the acting is terrible and the plot is predictable, but I still thought it was cute.

There's a fantastic scene in The Big Lebowski, where the enraged Jesus Quintana (John Turturro) screams "Laughable, man!" That's the only thing I could think of when watching this "movie". I surely didn't have high expectations, but I didn't expect anything as bad as what I saw.

Cheap production is all fine, not every movie needs to be a Hollywood blockbuster. But there's a minimum to expect from an indie film. Like... a half decent script. A story line that isn't so unnecessarily convoluted you give up after 20 minutes. Actors who can actually act. Dialogues that don't make you cringe every time someone on screen opens their mouth. Music that doesn't sounds like something out of a pilot for a TV series from the 1980's. But even with all that absent, this is a gymnastics movie. So surely you can show us some great gymnastics routines. Unfortunately, since the actresses aren't gymnasts, the camera has to resort to the most weird angles to obscure the lack of technique, and where stunt doubles are used - to obscure the faces. So not even that.

A laughable effort. 2/10

It was an entertaining movie, but was very disappointed that I didn't really get to see any of the routines. The camera angles only showed the hands or the feet, or a ceiling camera for the floor routines, but never the whole girl, like in American Anthem. It was very formulaic and I agree with a previous poster about the ending.

This movie was extremely similar to the 2006 movie "Stick it", but not as good.