☆☆½
Skating a fine line between comedy and pathos, I, Tonya is a quirky slice of Americana that includes all of the required elements and even picks up points for level of difficulty -- yet, like its main character, never quite manages to elicit our sympathy.
While it contains some fantastic performances, especially Margot Robbie's embodiment of the loud and crass figure skater who found herself at the center of a bizarre, violent scandal a quarter of a century ago as she fought her way, at all costs, onto the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Tonya Harding never seemed to care what anyone thought of her, and perhaps the biggest fault of I, Tonya is how much it wants to be liked.
Sometimes hyperactive, sometimes silly, sometimes brash, sometimes insightful, sometimes offensive, I, Tonya never settles on one particular style, and in its effort to always keep its audience engaged and smiling, it loses focus.
Using an awkwardly integrated framing device of interviews with the fictionalized Harding, her husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), mother Lavona (Allison Janney) and coach Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson), the movie impatiently uses these interviews -- which also include a pointless appearance by Bobby Cannavale as a tabloid TV producer -- in an effort to bring some perspective to the story.
Only occasionally does the idea work, mostly it interferes with the flow of its ironic retelling of how Harding rose from obscurity to fame as a figure skater everyone admired but no one really liked. About halfway through the film, Harding looks straight at the camera and indicts everyone in the audience as co-conspirators in her downfall -- and it's that moment, and that central idea, that works best. Harding was, inarguably, an early victim of celebrity-obsessed trash TV, until she was overshadowed by O.J. Simpson as a national object of fascination and scorn.
It's her brief moment of notoriety that I, Tonya wants to explore in more detail, but except for that one scene the movie can't quite find its way to be clear on what it wants to say: It certainly casts Harding in an unexpectedly sympathetic light, but was her notoriety a side-effect of her own obsession with success or the cause of it?
In spite of a bravura performance by Robbie as Harding, I, Tonya rarely tries for insight; even a strong supporting turn by Janney feels a bit strained, mostly makeup and mannerisms than character, and never quite finding the humanity beneath a slightly mocking attitude -- I, Tonya too often seems to be playing its story for shock value than for insight.
An uncouth, uneducated American mindset can be fertile ground for both satire and sympathy. The bleak, black comedy of Fargo seems on many levels to be one of I, Tonya's greatest inspirations, but this film lacks a critical element of the earlier: It doesn't seem to like its characters very much, frequently struggling even with Harding herself. If the movie can't find something to love in Harding's struggle, it's near-impossible to ask the audience to do the same.
Despite its flashes of wit -- both verbal and visual -- and its strong central performance, I, Tonya wobbles at first and ultimately falls, though there's something to be said for the effort it makes.
Viewed December 29, 2017 -- DVD
While it contains some fantastic performances, especially Margot Robbie's embodiment of the loud and crass figure skater who found herself at the center of a bizarre, violent scandal a quarter of a century ago as she fought her way, at all costs, onto the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Tonya Harding never seemed to care what anyone thought of her, and perhaps the biggest fault of I, Tonya is how much it wants to be liked.
Sometimes hyperactive, sometimes silly, sometimes brash, sometimes insightful, sometimes offensive, I, Tonya never settles on one particular style, and in its effort to always keep its audience engaged and smiling, it loses focus.
Using an awkwardly integrated framing device of interviews with the fictionalized Harding, her husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), mother Lavona (Allison Janney) and coach Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson), the movie impatiently uses these interviews -- which also include a pointless appearance by Bobby Cannavale as a tabloid TV producer -- in an effort to bring some perspective to the story.
Only occasionally does the idea work, mostly it interferes with the flow of its ironic retelling of how Harding rose from obscurity to fame as a figure skater everyone admired but no one really liked. About halfway through the film, Harding looks straight at the camera and indicts everyone in the audience as co-conspirators in her downfall -- and it's that moment, and that central idea, that works best. Harding was, inarguably, an early victim of celebrity-obsessed trash TV, until she was overshadowed by O.J. Simpson as a national object of fascination and scorn.
It's her brief moment of notoriety that I, Tonya wants to explore in more detail, but except for that one scene the movie can't quite find its way to be clear on what it wants to say: It certainly casts Harding in an unexpectedly sympathetic light, but was her notoriety a side-effect of her own obsession with success or the cause of it?
In spite of a bravura performance by Robbie as Harding, I, Tonya rarely tries for insight; even a strong supporting turn by Janney feels a bit strained, mostly makeup and mannerisms than character, and never quite finding the humanity beneath a slightly mocking attitude -- I, Tonya too often seems to be playing its story for shock value than for insight.
An uncouth, uneducated American mindset can be fertile ground for both satire and sympathy. The bleak, black comedy of Fargo seems on many levels to be one of I, Tonya's greatest inspirations, but this film lacks a critical element of the earlier: It doesn't seem to like its characters very much, frequently struggling even with Harding herself. If the movie can't find something to love in Harding's struggle, it's near-impossible to ask the audience to do the same.
Despite its flashes of wit -- both verbal and visual -- and its strong central performance, I, Tonya wobbles at first and ultimately falls, though there's something to be said for the effort it makes.
Viewed December 29, 2017 -- DVD
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