By Kyle Osborne
I, Tonya 4 out of 4 Stars
I kinda hate that this movie is being positioned as a snarky comedy in certain circles because it is so much better than that. It’s closer to a Shakespearean tragedy than an SNL skit. There are laughs, to be sure, but there are moments when the audience is stunned into silence. Margot Robbie’s performance had me in awe. Tonya Harding was always a tragic figure and I’m glad this film treats her life story (to date) with the depth it deserved, even if we were too busy ridiculing the “trailer trash” to notice.
Having said that, I, Tonya has its share of fun with its characters. Allison Janney as Tonya Harding’s miserable mother provides bountiful belly laughs with her perpetually lit cigarette and naughty parrot on her shoulder. But when she says something hateful and shitty to her only daughter, and she does that a lot, you almost feel wounded yourself–the delivery is that cutting, that cruel. Expect to see Janney among the nominees for Best Supporting Actress.
The film follows that crazy period in the 90’s when Harding’s arch rival, Nancy Kerrigan, was whacked in the knee with a kind of police baton that was meant to take her out of the competition. It didn’t take long at all to learn that it was Harding’s husband, Jeff Gillooly (like Janney, played with a deft mix of menace and goofiness by Sebastian Stan) and Harding’s “body guard”, Shawn Eckhardt, played almost exclusively for laughs by Paul Walter Hauser. Well, maybe I should take that back–Hauser is actually playing the obese and delusional body guard perfectly–but our hindsight reminds us of what a pathetic and laughable guy he was–living in his mother’s basement while telling anyone who would listen that he had experience in “intelligence.” Lol.
About Margot Robbie. We knew she was a fine actor. Did we know that she could imbue a heretofore unsympathetic character with so much humanity that we weep for her? I didn’t know. She breaks the fourth wall to address the audience directly, and you do feel as if the tough exterior of this fierce competitor could crack at any moment.
In fact, there’s a lot we didn’t know just from watching the non-stop news coverage of the ’94 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. I, Tonya starts with Harding’s hardscrabble childhood and takes us to the present day. But, to be sure, the film’s centerpiece (“what you all came to see,” she says to the audience) is that moment when all the world was watching two skaters from very different sides of the track. It’s exhilarating.
The real Tonya Harding may never end up on the “right” side of the tracks. Maybe it’s not meant to be. But if it doesn’t happen, we will know that Harding’s sad life was set in motion and perpetuated by the people who should have loved her the most.
R (for pervasive language, violence, and some sexual content/nudity) About 2 hours.
Kyle Osborne