One star. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang
Melissa McCarthy’s vulgar fat
slob shtick is wearing very thin.
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| Believing that she needs some quick cash in order to help with her grandmother's impending medical bills, Tammy (Melissa McCarthy, right) dons a minimal "disguise" and holds up a fast-food joint ... with a "weapon" that's no more than her pointing fingers in a papr bag. Yep, that's the level of humor in this bomb. |
Tammy isn’t even a rough approximation of a film;
it’s merely a series of disconnected scenes and encounters, clumsily stitched
together in a limp effort at storytelling. McCarthy charges through the
resulting mess like a bull in a china shop, as if daring us not to find her
so-called antics funny.
I’ll take that dare, Melissa.
You’re not funny.
Neither is your film.
Well, wait ... in fairness, I did
laugh once, at a quick shot involving a raccoon and a doughnut. McCarthy had
nothing to do with it.
I find it completely bewildering
that an actress of McCarthy’s talent and timing, having established her comic
chops with TV’s Mike & Molly
(winning an Emmy) and the big screen’s Bridesmaids
(Oscar nomination), would debase herself with material this puerile, sloppy and
slapdash. I’m inclined to believe that even the Three Stooges would have
rejected this script as beneath them.
Hollywood actresses have long
struggled to achieve a level of equality, credibility and respect akin to their
male co-stars ... and this is the path to success? Is demonstrating an ability
to out-gross Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Farrelly brothers comedies really a sign of progress?
If so, that’s pretty sad.
McCarthy has nobody to blame but
herself, since she shares scripting credit — if such a term even applies — with
off-camera husband Ben Falcone, who also makes his directorial debut with this
train wreck.
Note to Ben: Don’t lose your day
job.
Falcone makes every rookie
mistake in the book, starting with his tendency to frame his wife in tight
close-ups, so that we can count every sweaty pore. And he clearly didn’t
“direct” McCarthy in any sense of the word; he simply points the camera and
waits while she stumbles and bumbles through whatever she concocts from thin
air. Which ain’t much.
McCarthy plays — she doesn’t
deserve the phrase “stars as” — Tammy Banks, an unkempt ne'er-do-well who clearly
never made the acquaintance of a comb. Or a shower. In the space of a few hours
one morning, she loses her car, her job and her husband. The job is a
depressing shift at a McDonald’s-style fast-food joint dubbed Topper Jack’s;
the husband, Greg (Nat Faxon), has the good taste to get caught having an
affair with a next-door neighbor (Toni Collette, unable to work up any
enthusiasm for this supporting role).
Right from the top, with these
introductory scenes, the film comes apart. Tammy wrecks her car by hitting a
deer; the resulting close encounter between McCarthy and this injured animal is
played for laughs that never come. The subsequent confrontation with Greg and
Missi is a complete non-sequitur; it’s impossible to work up any interest in
“cheating” characters we’ve never met ... just as it’s impossible to imagine
that Greg ever would have married Tammy in the first place.
Convinced that her Midwestern
small town no longer holds any appeal, Tammy decides to hit the road in search
of ... whatever. That’s a bit tough, lacking a car, and her mother (Allison
Janney, utterly useless) isn’t about to lend her one. Happily (?), Grandma
Pearl (Susan Sarandon) is more agreeable, all of which spells r-o-a-d t-r-i-p.
Hijinks ensue, along with plenty
of bickering between Tammy and Pearl, who don’t seem to like each other very
much. Except when they love each other devotedly. Because the script insists that
they claim as much, every 15 minutes or so.
Minor escapades are punctuated by
several larger adventures, the first involving a randy old-timer named Earl
(Gary Cole) and his unexpectedly kind and sensitive son, Bobby (Mark Duplass).
Earl and Pearl can’t wait to get into each other’s pants, the latter often
proudly boasting that she slept with Duane Allman, back in the day. (“The wrong
Allman brother,” Tammy sniffs, contemptuously.)
Earl and Pearl behave in a
thoroughly contemptible manner, mistreating Tammy to a degree intended to make
us feel sorry for her: a sequence that perfectly captures the film’s inept
effort to blend so-called comedy with so-called pathos. Needless to say,
McCarthy’s Tammy is no more successful as an abused misfit, than she is as a
potty-mouthed misanthrope.
Somewhat later, Tammy and Pearl
wind up as guests of the latter’s fun-loving cousin Lenore (Kathy Bates), a
latter-day hippie defined mostly by her lesbian relationship with Susanne
(Sandra Oh). McCarthy and Falcone apparently decided that actual
characterization is entirely superfluous.
That said, Bates, Oh and Duplass do
seem to have wandered in from some other film (and a much better one). All
three deliver reasonably interesting performances despite Falcone’s
hammer-handed efforts; indeed, we actually grow to like Bobby, and look forward
to seeing him reappear, as the narrative lurches fitfully forward.
Unfortunately, that minor bit of
good will is sabotaged by a “serious” plot hiccup involving Pearl’s chronic
alcoholism, and her failure to manage her diabetes: a lapse of judgment
characterized by her dangerously bloated and discolored feet and ankles. To say
that this is a) a total downer, and b) a catastrophic blunder in terms of tone,
surely ranks as the summer’s biggest understatement.
Sarandon makes the most of this ill-health
sidebar, just as she tries gamely to wring some degree of feisty humor from her
often malicious dialogue.
Honestly, I can’t imagine what
we’re supposed to make of this ghastly excuse for a movie. Alcoholism and
diabetes sure as hell aren’t funny; neither are Tammy’s constant petulance and crude
commentary. Efforts to deliver a gentler tone — mostly involving Duplass’ Bobby
— are equally unsuccessful.
On top of which, Falcone and
editor Michael L. Sale have no sense of pacing; this 96-minute turkey is a
dull, dreary, utterly boring slog.
It also appears to be a
self-serving vanity project by McCarthy and Falcone, given the impressively
long list of (I’m guessing here) friends and colleagues who pop up in
uncredited, eye-blink appearances. The wrap party must’ve been something ...
and, no doubt, far more entertaining than the movie itself.
McCarthy is powerful enough,
right now, to have gotten pretty much any project off the ground. (The fact
that anybody at Warner Bros. okayed this turkey pretty much proves the point.)
That she chose to unleash this bomb, essentially raising her middle finger
toward the fans who’ve followed her thus far, is both reprehensible and
shameful.
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