Let’s not belabor the point here, Tammy is beastly, unfunny, and misguided. Above all else, Tammy is the champion of the greatest lesson adhered to by the willfully ignorant who exert influence over all aspects of our culture. That critical lesson? Never learn anything.
Tammy, a vehicle with Melissa McCarthy’s finger prints all over it as writer, star, and wife of the director, begins as dull as it finishes. Tammy is booted from her job, discovers her husband is having an affair, and she’s forced to move back in with her mother. From all outward appearances, Tammy should be the sympathetic figure at the heart of this maelstrom. Instead, she’s simply a dolt who dictated these circumstances, but feels these consequences are unfair. Despite her inability to accomplish anything for herself, life owes her something.
From here, the story unfolds like poorly cut paper dolls replicating meaningless scene after meaningless scene, each as two dimensional as the last. Tammy and her hard drinking grandma—played by the woefully misused Susan Sarandon—go on a road trip to Niagara Falls. And just when it seems like the brain trust behind Tammy couldn't buy a less imaginative needle point kit from the Hobby Lobby stable, they add in a man. There are few scenes more painful than the interactions between Mark Duplass (The League, Creep) and Melissa McCarthy. Their dialogue is stilted and any growing warmth between the two is merely a byproduct of said warmth being the next plot point.
There is no arc more painful than the seemingly good woman who is just, heck, so in love with her special man child. When you switch the gender roles, it’s just as maddening. Herein lies the deeper problems of Tammy. Where it’d be easy to cite the clunky pacing, the overly long sequences, the tone deaf slapstick comedy, the film’s biggest problem is it has no sense of itself. It wants to be some kind of light satire, but it doesn't have the guts to even be an accidental satire a la white trash epic Joe Dirt. The film wants to feature these despicable misfits just trying to find their way, but is insistent these characters remain redeemable. Yes, I’m saying the movie would have been better if the characters were shittier.
There are two scenes which really define Tammy, one I’ll recount here, the other I’ll save for my big finish when I’m really stomping on that soapbox as the ivory tower wobbles beneath me. At some point Tammy and her grandmother have to seek refuge with Kathy Bates, Grandma’s cousin. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh—like two road flares thrown into a black hole—are a well-to-do lesbian couple gearing up for their annual Fourth of July soiree. After a night of drinking, boob flashing, and giving a jet ski a Viking funeral (so much cringe), this pot of crap stew finally boils over. What happens? It doesn't matter, but alcohol causes the problem until Tammy is given a verbal kick in the ass from Bates…over beers of course.
Around here, after a nonsensical jump through time, the creators begin to mercifully draw the affair to a close. You could probably guess what happens as you've seen this flip-book of narrative stick figures thousands of times before, but Tammy gets her redemption. How? The film glosses over that, because salvation comes not from hard work and meaningful change, but getting what we want.
All of this, this everything Tammy, is distilled into a single moment. Near the beginning of the film, Tammy and her grandmother make a roadside stop and talk about, of all things, the Allman Brothers. Sitting on a stretch of two lane American asphalt, trying to pick out the harmonies in, “Midnight Rider,” the camera eye moves behind them and reveals they are sitting at the foot of grotesque wood carved statue, a bald eagle enshrined by an American flag. Like a moment drawn direct from the idealized America handbook, the sunlight dapples their faces, the outlaw lyrics warble from their throats, and they rest comfortably in the shadow of the eagle, erect and unbroken. It should be easy to know, but all I could think was, “I’m not sure if they are trying to get me to love America, or hate it.”
Tammy is not a love song to the socioeconomic downtrodden, poorly educated, unhealthy Middle American, it is a grim outgrowth of a culture desperate for this sort of icon. Relatable, misinformed on everything from politics to gender, divorced from the reality of actions and consequences, our hero remains swaddled in the protective blanket of ‘happy ending’. Not in any way earned, but simply because she’s entitled to it.
— Monte Monreal
Tammy, a vehicle with Melissa McCarthy’s finger prints all over it as writer, star, and wife of the director, begins as dull as it finishes. Tammy is booted from her job, discovers her husband is having an affair, and she’s forced to move back in with her mother. From all outward appearances, Tammy should be the sympathetic figure at the heart of this maelstrom. Instead, she’s simply a dolt who dictated these circumstances, but feels these consequences are unfair. Despite her inability to accomplish anything for herself, life owes her something.
From here, the story unfolds like poorly cut paper dolls replicating meaningless scene after meaningless scene, each as two dimensional as the last. Tammy and her hard drinking grandma—played by the woefully misused Susan Sarandon—go on a road trip to Niagara Falls. And just when it seems like the brain trust behind Tammy couldn't buy a less imaginative needle point kit from the Hobby Lobby stable, they add in a man. There are few scenes more painful than the interactions between Mark Duplass (The League, Creep) and Melissa McCarthy. Their dialogue is stilted and any growing warmth between the two is merely a byproduct of said warmth being the next plot point.
There is no arc more painful than the seemingly good woman who is just, heck, so in love with her special man child. When you switch the gender roles, it’s just as maddening. Herein lies the deeper problems of Tammy. Where it’d be easy to cite the clunky pacing, the overly long sequences, the tone deaf slapstick comedy, the film’s biggest problem is it has no sense of itself. It wants to be some kind of light satire, but it doesn't have the guts to even be an accidental satire a la white trash epic Joe Dirt. The film wants to feature these despicable misfits just trying to find their way, but is insistent these characters remain redeemable. Yes, I’m saying the movie would have been better if the characters were shittier.
There are two scenes which really define Tammy, one I’ll recount here, the other I’ll save for my big finish when I’m really stomping on that soapbox as the ivory tower wobbles beneath me. At some point Tammy and her grandmother have to seek refuge with Kathy Bates, Grandma’s cousin. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh—like two road flares thrown into a black hole—are a well-to-do lesbian couple gearing up for their annual Fourth of July soiree. After a night of drinking, boob flashing, and giving a jet ski a Viking funeral (so much cringe), this pot of crap stew finally boils over. What happens? It doesn't matter, but alcohol causes the problem until Tammy is given a verbal kick in the ass from Bates…over beers of course.
Around here, after a nonsensical jump through time, the creators begin to mercifully draw the affair to a close. You could probably guess what happens as you've seen this flip-book of narrative stick figures thousands of times before, but Tammy gets her redemption. How? The film glosses over that, because salvation comes not from hard work and meaningful change, but getting what we want.
All of this, this everything Tammy, is distilled into a single moment. Near the beginning of the film, Tammy and her grandmother make a roadside stop and talk about, of all things, the Allman Brothers. Sitting on a stretch of two lane American asphalt, trying to pick out the harmonies in, “Midnight Rider,” the camera eye moves behind them and reveals they are sitting at the foot of grotesque wood carved statue, a bald eagle enshrined by an American flag. Like a moment drawn direct from the idealized America handbook, the sunlight dapples their faces, the outlaw lyrics warble from their throats, and they rest comfortably in the shadow of the eagle, erect and unbroken. It should be easy to know, but all I could think was, “I’m not sure if they are trying to get me to love America, or hate it.”
Tammy is not a love song to the socioeconomic downtrodden, poorly educated, unhealthy Middle American, it is a grim outgrowth of a culture desperate for this sort of icon. Relatable, misinformed on everything from politics to gender, divorced from the reality of actions and consequences, our hero remains swaddled in the protective blanket of ‘happy ending’. Not in any way earned, but simply because she’s entitled to it.
— Monte Monreal
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