I, Tonya (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆

I, Tonya (2017) – C. Gillespie

Is this really supposed to be a comedy?  About Tonya Harding, the figure skater whose husband arranged for a hit man to bash competitor Nancy Kerrigan’s knee before the 1994 Olympics?  How is that expected to be funny?  Is it because Harding was a “white trash” type, with bad taste in clothes, hair, and music?  Is it because her mother (played by Alison Janney who won the Best Supporting Actress gong for this role) was an evil bitch?  Is it because she surrounded herself with hopeless losers who hatched the bizarre plan to “help” her?  Yet, a lot of what we see seems played for laughs and that includes some hair-raising and very frequent scenes of brutal domestic violence.  Or if they aren’t meant to be funny, then they do represent very dark and abrupt changes in tone for the film, which also includes recurring breaks to the fourth wall, where characters speak directly to the camera/audience, commenting on the action that they are immersed in.  You see, the film itself is supposedly drawn from competing interviews by Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, who are recounting past events from the future, albeit very differently (i.e., in a self-interested way).  Over the closing credits, we see the real Harding and Gillooly (and mother LaVona) which shows you just how much effort was put in by Margot Robbie (Harding), Sebastian Stan (Gillooly), and Janney to mimic the real people – which makes you wonder what the point of such an exact recreation would be.  But of course, there’s more, a lot more (as I mentioned), and the result is something of a trainwreck, not without some interest, yet harsh in so many ways. Or maybe this just doesn’t jell with my sense of humour...