A good movie

Since I kept hearing some pretty good things about this flick and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it turned out to be a really strong documentary but, to be honest, even though it was sometimes shocking, some of it was actually hardly surprising, I’m afraid. Eventually, the only critic I might have was that the whole thing was rather scattered. Indeed, most of the duration was about the massively creepy and even rather horrifying Larry Nassar but, sometimes, it felt like the makers wanted to go beyond that and show that the gymnastics world, in general, on that such high competitive level, is actually based on child cruelty. I know my wife has always been a huge fan of gymnastics and she watches it on TV on a regular basis but I would rather skip it from now on. In this documentary, it was also argued that the cruelty regarding this young children is something specific to this sport but, while it seems to be indeed on a rather extreme level in this sport, in almost all major sports, children are scouted at a very young age. For example, in football (soccer), in Europe or South America, a young talent can be scouted at 12 years old and sent to a football training camp. It is pretty much what happened to Lionel Messi who spent basically his whole life playing in one form or another for the FC Barcelona. Coming back to Larry Nassar, I wonder why the USA Gymnastics didn’t quietly get rid off him and get some other doctor instead? I mean, Bela and Marta Karolyi, even if they might seem pretty evil as well, were the cornerstone of the whole training programme but Nassar didn’t seem to be some kind of wonder doctor. Anyway, to conclude, even if I wish they went a little bit deeper on the problematic of having such young children competing at such a high level, the whole thing was still quite heart-breaking and really interesting to behold and it is definitely worth a look.