Tammy (July 4, 2014)
Tammy is a road movie in which misfits Tammy Banks (Melissa McCarthy) and her unorthodox, alcoholic grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), escape from their small Illinois town and head for Niagara Falls. Along the way they have romantic and less romantic encounters when both women get in trouble with the law.
If that sounds like a recipe for a modern day Thelma and Louise don’t get your hopes up. Whereas Ridley Scott’s film was nominated for half-a-dozen Oscars winning the best original screenplay, only some fierce competition will keep Tammy out of the running for a Razzie Award.
Tammy Banks is sacked from her fast food job when she is once again late for work. She returns home to find her husband enjoying a romantic dinner for two with their neighbour. After making all sorts of empty threats about lawsuits, she stuffs some clothes into a broken suitcase and walks over to her mother’s (Allison Janney) house.
There we learn that losing her job and threatening to leave their small town life is a pattern for Tammy. But this time her bored, adventure-seeking grandmother, Pearl (Sarandon) also has her bag packed and offers to finance the trip if Tammy will drive.
On the road, Pearl picks up fun-loving farmer Earl (Gary Cole) in a bar, and the two go off to the women’s motel. But Tammy’s embarrassing, drunken approaches to Earl’s son, Bobby (Mark Duplass), are rebuffed and she’s left to sleep on the ground outside the motel room door.
Bobby tells Tammy that he hangs out with his father to see that he makes it home, which doesn’t say much about a relationship with either man. We are left to imagine that Earl’s loose behaviour is a reaction to his responsibilities for caring for an ex-wife who is dying of a terminal disease.
When Pearl is thrown into jail following an altercation in a petrol station, Tammy robs a branch of her fast food joint to bail her out. This prolonged scene is especially painful as Tammy is so easily identifiable. In the meantime, Earl has already bailed Pearl out of jail and she makes Tammy return the stolen money.
It’s too late to stop the police hunt, however, so Pearl calls on her wealthy, resourceful friend Lenore (Kathy Bates), to lend the pair a new vehicle and blow up the old one that the police are looking for.
Kathy and her lesbian lover (Sandra Oh) throw a party and invite Earl and Bobby. By now Bobby has, rather incredibly, formed an attachment to Tammy whose crazy life is apparently a relief from his humdrum existence.
This poor excuse for a plot has only one reason for existing, and that’s to be a vehicle McCarthy, and filled with funny lines and gags designed for her body size and style vulgar sense of humour. It is understandable that Academy Award-winning actress Sarandon is fed up with the standard roles allotted to women in their late 60s, but this one does her no favours.
McCarthy co-writes and co-produces with her husband, the actor Ben Falcone, here, making his Directorial debut, so there was no one outside of this close-knit duo to provide honest feed-back.
McCarthy has made her name in roles involving breaches of what society considers to be good taste, but here the formula is too transparent and the delicate line between funny and distasteful or awkward is blurred at best. Not enough thought has gone into the characters and only Bobby is somewhat likeable.
McCarthy rose to fame in Bridesmaids, produced by Judd Apatow, where her supporting role as the gross-out, fat bridesmaid with a heart and brains was sensational. She was also terrific in a cameo in This is 40, another Apatow collaboration. But she fared less well co-starring opposite Sandra Bullock in the female cop comedy, The Heat, while the romcom, the Identify Thief opposite Jason Bateman was a total disaster.
Some actors are made character roles and McCarthy might be one of them.
So far, she has been best in supporting roles where her particular brand of humour, that Apatow recognises, can be rationed out in small doses. This isn’t to say that her body shape and size must limit her choice of roles, but it will if she continues with films like Tammy.
by Joyce Glasser, Mature Times film reviewer
