Stars: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Kathy Bates, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd, Gary Cole, Sandra Oh, Mark Duplass, Toni Collette, Nat Faxon, Ben Falcone
Director: Ben Falcone
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
Melissa McCarthy has had one of the swiftest and oddest
rises to movie stardom in recent years.
After years of solid but under-the-radar television work in shows like Gilmore Girls, Samantha Who, and Mike and Molly, she became the breakout
star of the monster hit movie Bridesmaids. In the years since, she’s been
nominated for an Oscar, won an Emmy, and starred in two more major hits (Identity Thief and The Heat). Much has
been made about her weight and the age at which she became a breakout star, but
the reality is that this is an impressive run for any actor, regardless of
gender or weight, and McCarthy is now positioned in Hollywood as one of the
biggest stars in its firmament.
She’s as bankable as DiCaprio, as well-liked as Bullock, and as talented
as Hanks. She’s a force to be
reckoned with.
(Spoilers Ahead) She’s
also one of the few actors in Hollywood that basically guarantees I get out and
see her movie, so regardless of the reviews (and oh how treacherous they have
been!), I was there opening night of Tammy,
ready with one of my friends to enjoy the delightful McCarthy. And I have to say that I left somewhat
satisfied. I get where the
reviewers were coming from, but I also feel like they missed a few of the
points of the film itself.
The film tells the tale of Tammy (McCarthy), a woman
somewhere in her thirties who is having a no good, very bad day. She totals her car when a deer hits
her, gets fired from her job as a result, and then comes home early to find
that her husband (Faxon) has been having an affair with the neighbor
(Collette). As a result of all of
this, she decides to head out on the open road, but needs money and a car,
which means that her grandmother, Pearl, (Sarandon) needs to tag along.
On the road, of course, we find that Tammy has dreams of a
better life for herself, but little follow-through, and oftentimes acts
impetuously and without regard for other people. Pearl seems somewhat more level-headed but imbibes to an
unhealthy degree, causing her to occasionally say or do things that seem out of
character.
Throughout the film we meet a bevy of interesting
characters, particularly of note being Kathy Bates as Pearl’s lesbian cousin
Lenore and her partner Suzanne (Oh).
The film had started meandering in multiple directions by the Lenore
point in the movie, so Bates and her steady, calming presence was most welcome
and probably makes her the MVP of the supporting cast, though the entire film
is really just about McCarthy.
Honestly, that’s the main and probably only reason to see
the movie, because the actual script and plot are a mess (McCarthy and her
husband wrote the script, and while I see where they were going, this needed
some heavy editing and rewriting).
For starters, there’s no way of knowing what sort of movie we’re
supposed to be telling. McCarthy’s
Tammy is occasionally Megan from Bridesmaids,
and then on a dime turns into Shannon from The Heat, and there even appears to be a bit of Dawn in Identity Thief in there. It’s all a conglomerate of past
McCarthy characters, which would be fine (actors repeat performances all the
time and oftentimes with great success-just ask Cary Grant), but there’s too
little consistency across Tammy.
Is she down-on-her-luck or is she just a loser who never tried? The film doesn’t seem to know, and
tries to make her both.
The same can be said for the love story. I like that McCarthy wanted a talented
cast surrounding her, and gave her old friend Nat Faxon a small role as her
husband (they were in The Groundlings together), but it’d be easier for us to
feel for her if we’d had at least one scene of the two of them together. We don’t know whether to feel hatred or
pity for the character (Tammy isn’t an easy character to live with, and she did
cheat on him), and so the main obstacle to her later romance with a shy local
man named Bobby (Duplass) is kind of a “huh.” This is a pity because McCarthy was born to play romantic
comedy leads-that ability to get the audience to root for you and have both a
tough exterior and a soft side-she has that in a way no actress has had
onscreen since the Holy Trinity of Roberts/Bullock/Ryan in the 90’s. This, quite frankly, and not gross-out
comedy, should be her genre of choice.
The last really odd thing about this movie is the ages of
the cast members. I get that
actors frequently play characters not quite their age, and I will easily buy
McCarthy as 35 (she looks younger than she actually is to begin with), but
Allison Janney and especially Susan Sarandon seem WAY too young to be playing
her mother and grandmother, respectively.
Would it have been so bad to cast someone like Cloris Leachman or Betty
White or an actor who could have believably passed for her grandmother in the
role of Pearl? It’s such an odd
decision on the part of the cast, and one that frequently took you out of the
movie.
All that being said, McCarthy herself is intensely watchable
in this movie, like she always is.
She can sell the physical aspects of the comedy (the holdup scene is wildly
funny, and most of her one-liners land with aplomb), and also has the actor’s
sensitivity to never abandon the audience-we always want what’s best for Tammy,
even when she does particularly stupid things. And the romantic comedy angle, though a bit tagged on: I’m
not kidding here; someone cast this woman in the next big Rom-Com.
Those were my thoughts on the uneven but occasionally quite
watchable Tammy. What are yours? Do you also feel that McCarthy would be
best-suited for romantic comedies?
What are your thoughts on the bizarre age gaps? And should Kathy Bates be in every
film? Share in the comments!
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