Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Mark Duplass
In the space of one day, Tammy hits a deer with her car, loses her job at a fast food restaurant and finds out her husband (Nat Faxon) has been having an affair. Moving back in with her mother (Alison Janney), Tammy soon finds herself hitting the road again with her rebellious grandmother, Pearl (Sarandon) as they go on a wild road trip.
Since the release of Bridesmaids back in 2011, the career of Melissa McCarthy has undergone a meteoric rise with it usually only being a few months between starring roles hitting the big screen in various comedies. In that capacity, McCarthy has been playing very similar roles. Usually playing a brash and devil-may-care foul-mouthed lady oaf but with a soft centre. Suffice to say, Tammy is not really any different as a performance and conforms to those ideas to the letter, but there is enough on the side to make it tolerable.
As much as she seems to be playing the same sort of role lately, McCarthy is an actress with some versatility. Last year she starred in another comic road movie, Identity Thief. It was awful but one thing that did stand out was a brief moment where McCarthy's titular thief showed a vulnerable side. More of that is on display in Tammy. It's not an emotionally resonant deconstruction of McCarthy's earlier work but it does allow for her to build on her strengths.
By her side is Susan Sarandon playing more-or-less her real age, but that's only late-sixties and she's notoriously aged well leaving her status as "grandma" to McCarthy a little unbelievable (the same is true of Alison Janney as McCarthy's mother) but, like McCarthy, Sarandon's main strength lies in the dramatic side of the character even though Sarandon can do comedy. The real standout is Kathy Bates (because...well, she's Kathy freakin' Bates) as Sarandon's fun-loving but wise cousin, at times reminiscent of Bates' performance as Gertrude Stein in Midnight In Paris.
Early on the film does confirm the suspicions that this will be rather brainless, low-brow and a fairly infuriating experience. The trailers and promotion the film has gathered certainly don't help this impression but as mentioned above, it builds to something stronger. Despite it being a road trip movie, that element is downplayed (though given it's Susan Sarandon the notion of her shooting someone and then having to go on the run with McCarthy is never too far from the mind) and the film isn't really that funny. There may be a few sort of half-laughs but nothing particularly tickles the funny bone. However, for this film there has been an assemblage of some pretty impressive talent with some good actresses. It's probably not enough to pull in the sceptics, but in comparison to some of its contemporaries, it's not a bad film.
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