When you sit down to watch a Melissa McCarthy movie, you expect to watch her fumble around, saying profane and downright dirty things to people, but still find a way to cheer her character on. Unfortunately, her vanity project “Tammy,” fails to live up to that expertly crafted and hilarious trailer, even if it tries really hard to be the type of movie that audiences expect.
McCarthy stars as the titular character, who lost her job at a fast food restaurant after she hit a deer with her car and arrived late. When she gets back home, she walks in on her husband Greg (Nat Faxon, “The Way, Way Back”) cheating on her with the neighbor Missy (Toni Collette, “The Way, Way Back”) in the middle of dinner. She then packs her belongings and walks next door to her mother Deb (Allison Janney, “Bad Words”) to tell her she is skipping town. With a broken car and no money, Tammy is forced to let her alcoholic, diabetic grandmother Pearl (Susan Sarandon, “Ping Pong Summer”) come along with her. From there, they go on a series of misadventures on their way to Niagara Falls.
The film was co-written by McCarthy with her husband Ben Falcone, the film’s director. The best thing about this film, and perhaps its only redeeming quality, is that McCarthy is very likable because she tries really hard to liven up the material. She works her magic to make the jokes funny, the emotions realistic, and the characters multidimensional. For instance, at the very beginning, when she walks in on Greg and Missy, she exclaims heartbreakingly “You never even cooked me dinner,” before jumping into a joke. It’s those little glances of vulnerability and self-loathing that makes McCarthy shine.
But those traces of warmth are oddly misplaced in a film with no sense of tone and haphazard editing. “Tammy” strives to be funny and heartwarming at the same time, but none of the scenes connect in a meaningful way. At the crux of this problem is the film’s rendering of Tammy and her grandmother’s relationship. It’s never outlined properly, so when Tammy says wincingly sentimental lines like “You were my best friend,” it doesn’t resonate. Tammy herself is inconsistent: uncouth and uncaring one moment and suddenly wimpy the next.
And for a film that has so many funny women in it, it uses them marginally and not at all in a flattering manner. Collette, a superb actress, does nothing but watch Tammy go crazy, while Janney and Bates have little to do even if they give good performances. Sarandon, on the other hand, finds little nuance in Pearl and offers little beyond variations of cantankerous, callous and cruel.
McCarthy deserves the success that she garnered because she is genuinely funny, but she deserves better material than this. “Tammy” is a failure in conception and delivery, even when its star is really good.
“Tammy” (96 min, R) is in D.C. theaters today.
