Melissa McCarthy proved her chops as a three-time host of
“Saturday Night Live” with a pastiche of mostly cartoonish characters. Her
performances on the show are so humorous, joining Steve Martin and Tom Hanks in
The Five Timers Club is inevitable.
“Tammy” is written by McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone,
and obviously, writing and starring in a movie shows your chops too.
Ultimately, that is what makes “Tammy” one of the year’s biggest
disappointments.
On “SNL”, McCarthy found a different quirk or speech pattern
for a variety of delightfully weird characters. But if you’ve seen 2013’s “The
Heat”, Tammy is entirely derivative of McCarthy’s character (Mullins) from that
film. They are profane, rude, unkempt, and sensitive beneath a gruff exterior,
but Tammy is a far less likable. Mullins is the female version of the classic
“plays by his own rules” cop, and is flanked by the stoic, by-the-book Sandra
Bullock, giving McCarthy a straight woman to play off.
Conversely, Tammy’s main foil is her debauched grandmother,
Pearl (Susan Sarandon). Pearl is often more Tammy than Tammy, popping pills,
swigging whiskey, and flashing her naughty bits. When Tammy is fired from her
fast-food gig and subsequently catches her husband cheating, she wants to leave
town. But without money, a working vehicle, or help from her mother, Deb
(Allison Janney), she is apparently stuck. Fortunately, Pearl has cash, a car,
and a burning desire to see Niagara Falls.
And thus, comedy ensues, at least in theory. The tone is
never clear, however. Cartoonish main characters often work in comedy, but the
second lead is rarely equally zany. (“Dumb & Dumber” is a notable
exception, but notice no one even approaches one percent of Jim Carrey’s antics
in “Ace Ventura” or “Liar Liar”. Likewise, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat and Bruno
are always the absurdist center of a situation with normal people.) While Tammy
pushes the comedic ball forward in the first act, as soon as Pearl is
introduced, they seemingly take turns being disgusting or disgusted. Neither
character makes a convincing straight woman.
Moreover, in the last 20-30 minutes of the movie, the tone
becomes much more serious, as we
delve into Pearl’s addiction, Tammy’s awful behavior, and their family issues.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t have cared less about any of it, and the dramatic
tone shift only served to derail what little comedy was there. When a 96-minute
comedy feels like it’s dragging, that is a horrible sign.
Finally, Sarandon and Janney were both bizarre casting
choices based on their ages. Sarandon is 24 years older than McCarthy, and
again, we’re supposed to believe that Sarandon is her grandmother. Simply putting a gray-perm wig on one of the best
looking and famous 67-year-old women on the planet is not enough to make me
believe she’s a 43-year-old’s grandmother. Furthermore, based on real-life
ages, Deb was apparently 11 when she birthed Tammy. The question is, why wasn’t
Pearl the mother instead of the grandmother? Little about the story would
change except plausibility. I guess Hollywood thinks drunken grandmothers are
funnier than drunken moms, and apparently, Betty White was unavailable.
“Tammy” has a handful
of laughs, but ultimately, there aren’t enough to justify your viewing. You can
do much better. I’m certain McCarthy has a better movie in her too.
