Tammy

I walked into Tammy expecting some very big laughs.  I got a couple good ones, but not the big laughs I was expecting.  Really, I expected this to be the movie that would truly launch Melissa McCarthy as a leading comic actress.  Oh, she's done great work along side actors like Sandra Bullock and Kristen Wiig, but I expected her to carry this whole film on her own.  And, she does, but not in the way you expect.  McCarthy seems more concerned with being liked here than she does in getting laughs.

I did like McCarthy a lot in this movie, and I think she is quite capable of carrying a great big comedy hit on her own.  This isn't that movie, however.  In fact, despite the ad campaign selling this as a broad comedy, there's a certain sadness that hangs over Tammy.  It's a story about a woman who doesn't have a lot of confidence in herself, has been hurt a lot in her life, and has just recently been hurt again.  It's also the story of Tammy's alcoholic grandmother, Pearl, played by Susan Sarandon.  The two have a lot of individual and shared pain, some of which they have inflicted on each other over the years.  There are a lot of quiet and sad reflective moments with the two mixed in with the jokes that the ad campaign is emphasizing.  The movie does have a bit of a confused tone mixing the laughs with the pathos, but in the end, I am recommending it.  I liked the performances, and the movie does have enough laughs to get by.

Even before the opening credits have finished, the movie is hard at work at making us sympathize with McCarthy's character.  On her way to work at a third rate burger joint, she gets in a car accident when a deer runs out in front of her car.  Tammy arrives at her job dirty and disheveled, is chewed out by her boss (played by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone, who also directs the film and co-wrote the script with her), and is promptly fired.  She returns home to her husband (Nat Faxon), looking for sympathy, only to find him having an affair with the neighbor (Toni Collette, woefully underused here).  She heads to her mom's (Allison Janney), only to find she can't stand living there, so she decides to hit the open road and drive to nowhere in particular, just so she can get away from her life.  Grandma Pearl comes along for the ride, and seeing Susan Sarandon in a road trip female buddy movie immediately brings to mind 1991's Thelma and Louise.  Fortunately, this road trip has a slightly happier ending for the women involved.

From there, the movie takes a rather loose plot structure, and really turns into a series of episodes on the road.  Both Tammy and Pearl strike up potential relationships with a father and adult son.  The father (Gary Cole) seems to share Grandma Pearl's love for sex and alcohol.  The son (Mark Duplass) is initially kind of turned off by Tammy's brash and open personality at first, but gradually warms up to her, and they have a few nice scenes together.  The main characters also have various run-ins with the law, have to spend time in prison, and even get to participate in a Lesbian Fourth of July Celebration.  None of these plot points carry a lot of weight.  What grabs our attention are the lead performances.  As McCarthy and Sarandon's characters are forced to face their personal and inner demons while on the road, and confront what led them to the women they are today, the movie does achieve a certain sort of subtle poignancy.  It's not deep or anything, but the movie does take its characters a bit more seriously than you might expect.

There is some great talent that shows up throughout Tammy, but only about half of them are used to their full potential.  Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh turn up as a lesbian couple, and while Bates gets some good dialogue, Oh is mainly required to stand beside her in a lot of their scenes together.  When Toni Collette appeared on the screen, I initially became excited, only to see her talents get wasted in a rather minor role where she must have less than a minute of dialogue total.  I get the feeling that maybe a lot of her scenes were left on the cutting room floor.  Dan Aykroyd has the role of Tammy's father, and shows up late in the film.  He's actually very good and likable during the brief time he's on screen, and you kind of wonder why the movie didn't introduce him sooner.  One actress who does make the most of her limited screen time is Sarah Baker, who plays a woman who works at a fast food restaurant that Tammy tries to hold up at one point.  She gets some good laughs just about every time she's on camera.

So, this is an uneven movie.  But the reason why I am recommending it is mainly for the performances, and the fact that I liked the two lead characters.  I liked their relationship that they shared, and I felt for them when the movie needed me to.  And while I didn't laugh as loud or as much as I was expecting to, I did still laugh from time to time.  This may be an imperfect movie, but it's also a likable one.  It's just not the gut-busting farce that the commercials are selling it to be.  Will audiences be disappointed by this fact?  I can't say for sure, but for some reason, I can't see this becoming the big hit that the studio is banking it to be. 

I still think McCarthy has a great movie within her, and will one day get to carry a truly hilarious film entirely on her own.  I thinks he has the warmth, charm and humor to pull it off.  She just needs to find the vehicle that will really let her play to all of her strengths.

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