While this movie doesn't rank high for entertainment purposes, I certainly relate to the movie, not because of the Gymnastics, but because of what Steve was put through as a child, just as I was put through by my own mother to the point she permanently lost parental rights of me. Don't get me wrong, foster care system was no fun either because of all the stigmatism that comes with being a foster child. The only good things I can say about the foster care system, it did break me out of that vicious abusive cycle as it also gave me various experiences to draw from, but on the other hand, having to do go through daily beatings on school grounds and be treated like I couldn't learn or do anything all because of me being a foster child, learning disabled, and having to deal with epileptic seizures that were only progressively getting worse until I had the laser brain operation done to be rid of them things permanently when I was 20, is no proper treatment of a foster child either.As for my social life, that was only corrected via Cross Country running as well as Track & Field as a distance runner. I was one of the top distance runners in the state of Michigan despite the facts I had to keep my adrenaline in check in attempt to prevent the seizures from happening during the races thus I had to strategize my races, and I was taking 2,700mgs of Tegretol per day, that's a downer, thus you would have thought that would have slowed me down.The whole relationship thing seemed it wasn't well prepared, but did have some good points in there too.While Steve go through periods of quitting, this is one area where I differ. While I have had setbacks, I don't quit. It was so bad to the point, I was like, how dare anyone tell me I can't do something, especially in areas that I am exceptionally good at and yet, they attempted to hold me back in those same areas trying to make me out as if I couldn't learn anything. Example, yes, I ended up dropping out of college due to funds and other reasons, but eventually, I went back and no wonder why I was able to do 4 years of education work including preparing for and taking all 4 CPA exams, all the while earning my Masters of 51 quarter credit hours with a 3.67 overall GPA on a 4.0 scale, after having earned 90.5 quarter credit hours for my BBA within 15 months to earn a 3.88 overall GPA on a 4.0 scale. All of that was done within 28 months. On the other hand when a school forces you to retake "General Math" in 8th grade when you already passed that very course in the 7th grade with the second highest overall grade for the year out of 31 students, and then use the excuse my records were lost in the mail, that's very bad. They even attempted to hold me back in the 9th grade, but only claim it was high school level as if it was any harder, when even the "Pre-Algebra" course didn't have anything new in it until the 4th quarter.

Yes she was mostly likable and she is pleasant to look at but the movie is just awful. It seems like one mission of this was to promote her for future work, I don't think it worked even though she seems more than capable. We have seen the small town hero have to go back and work before, this 1986 update to the theme was unnecessary from a movie watchers point of view. It timely exploited the seemingly great guy Gaylord as an American hero, which is certainly is/was. As a high school gymnast I was excited to see it but other than the gymnastics this film is pitiful. The filming/editing of the gymnastics was very good. Watch for the gymnastics but expect nothing else.

I didn't get to see this film until a year after it was in the theaters, one of my first experiences of seeing a movie on VHS (my parents didn't have cable or a VHS player). I was working as a camp counselor at a summer camp for the mentally disabled with a few weeks of youth summer camp in a small town east of Seattle the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. It was an important formative experience of my youth. I watched this movie so many times in the decade following, and I had the theme song on cassette, (I can still hear it in my head "Two hearts beat as one together" 25 years later). It it is viewed in the cultural light of 1986, and you are still young at heart, are a fan of competitive gymnastics, and can remember what young passionate love is like, you should enjoy this movie. Makes me want to watch it again!

A dull film that tried to capitalize on the craze the U.S. had with the Summer Olympics of 1984 in Los Angeles, but came way too late to make any impression with movie audiences. "American Anthem"'s stars are much more interesting than the film itself which is a dud to put it mildly. The movie focuses on a young man (Mitch Gaylord) who gets the itch to compete in gymnastics again after meeting the new girl in town (Janet Jones). She is training for the Olympic trials and of course he starts to compete once again just basically to be with her more. A corny production that has no real pep at all. Gaylord, a former Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, proved to be a bust as a leading man. He would later appear in a few soft-core direct-to-video adult productions and become a stunt man for several other films (most notably "Batman Forever"). Janet Jones would later marry all-world hockey star Wayne Gretzky after this film. That is her claim to fame, not "American Anthem". Turkey (0 stars out of 5)