I, Tonya (2017, Craig Gillespie) (Patreon)

46/100

Another film that I bailed on in 2017 but am "obligated" to watch due to dumb self-imposed rules. (See my Big Sick review for details.) Having lived through this scandal, I went in pretty skeptical about its dramatic potential, and Gillespie's cartoonish approach didn't change my mind—we're talking here about a guy who decided to slap "Devil Woman" onto LaVona's toxic-mom routine, "Feels Like the First Time" onto Harding's triple axel, and "Goodbye Stranger" onto a divorce montage. One might also point out that it's redundant to have characters constantly break the fourth wall in a movie that's replete with fictionalized talking-head interviews (pick one or the other), and that having Harding "playfully" dispute the accuracy of minor details (e.g. the shotgun) only underlines the degree to which her insistence that she, Tonya, was the true victim here ultimately goes unchallenged. Gillespie's instincts are way too populist for him to inspire any sort of conflicted or oppositional response (in the way that Scorsese routinely does), and he cares so little for psychological continuity that Gillooly inexplicably metamorphoses from doofus to razor-sharp operator when Eckardt is wearing a wire, in order to facilitate a cool scene—it's actually quite strong if you ignore the context—that, as far as I can determine, was completely invented. Mostly, though, I was disappointed that Robbie failed to replicate Harding's heartbreakingly raw emotions on the ice—her barely perceptible "Yes!" gesture after landing the triple (which Robbie exaggerates), the overwhelming mixture of pride and relief on her face as she holds her final pose. I've never been able to watch her actual competition footage without tearing up, whereas I, Tonya's skating scenes—even the lacing debacle—left me strangely unmoved. Robbie does nail Harding's desperate plea to the judge, in which she begs to serve 18 months in jail rather than be stripped of the one thing that makes her feel special; I can't find any evidence that this happened in real life, but it's entirely consistent with Harding's public image. That's the only time I really recognized her, though.

(Guess I oughta say something about Allison Janney, since she won the Oscar and all. That's the only reason I'd think to mention her, honestly. She's perfectly fine given the limitations of the role as conceived; abusive characters—parents in particular, for some reason—tend to be too one-dimensional to interest me much. That's Ed, she keeps it phony when LaVona finally demonstrates some love, which felt bizarrely discordant in the moment but soon gets revealed as apt. Other very quick cast notes while I'm on the subject: easy to see how Paul Walter Hauser's droll yet weirdly...submerged performance here landed him Richard Jewell; Caitlin Carver makes zero impression as Nancy Kerrigan; goddamn I just do not recognize Sebastian Stan from role to role, he must have the world's most generically handsome face or something.)