TAMMY (M)
★★★
(Hoyts Belconnen/Woden, Limelight Tuggeranong)
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We think sequelitis is a modern phenomenon but Hollywood has always milked every cent it could out of a concept. In the late 1950s and early '60s, Sandra Dee then Debbie Reynolds then Debbie Watson played teenage ingenue Tammy in a series of films and a TV series.
This film has nothing to do with those similarly titled efforts, and is in fact their antithesis. The earlier Tammy was a naive country girl who moved to the city, while this Tammy, a role comedienne Melissa McCarthy wrote for herself, is an awful, unattractive human being, both selfish and mean-spirited.
McCarthy isn't averse to milking a situation for all it's worth, both in terms of her bankability since her scene-stealing support role in Bridesmaids, and the gags in this, her first screenplay (written with her husband, Ben Falcone who makes his directorial debut).
Tammy is not having a good day. Fired from her job, her car totalled after hitting a deer, she comes home to find her husband shacked up with her friend (Toni Collette).
While Tammy wants to run away from it all, she has to take her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) with her; a condition of using Grandma's car to run away in.
Grandma is also running away, from a series of medical conditions and the inevitability of being placed in a nursing home, and the pair enable each other's bad behaviour, from picking up men and excessive drinking, to robbing a fast-food outlet.
We've all had bad days and so, despite being written as such an unlikeable character, it's easy to sympathise with Tammy and her behaviour.
McCarthy plays to her strengths, though the film loses steam by the third act, slipping into pretty standard Hollywood formula.
Delivering what is expected and no more, I think the film will bank enough at the box office to see both McCarthy and Falcone teaming up again, hopefully working from (someone else's) stronger screenplay.
Sarandon is an inspired casting as the grandmother, with this plot vaguely referencing her earlier Thelma and Louise, though this is hardly a film about empowerment, and more about the anger of the lower classes about precariousness of our hold on our place in the world – which is pretty deep stuff for a supposed comedy. Points to McCarthy and Falcone for trying.
There are charming support roles for a bunch of McCarthy's pals, including Sandra Oh and Kathy Bates as a lesbian couple and Mark Duplass as the romantic interest.