Review of I, Tonya (2017) by Runn D — 16 Feb 2018

Taking the girl out of the trailer park. So depending on your age, you probably remember the Tonya Harding scandal to varying degrees of clarity. Maybe you just remember Nancy Kerrigan on the ground, repeatedly asking the question "why?" to no one in particular.

Well, there is more to the story that you probably don't know about, and Harding (Margot Robbie) is here to set the record straight. Now I was very much excited for this based on how it was sold to me, which was as a dark comedy.

The performances were also said to be stellar, so of course I had to check it out in a theater. I do think that this is a really good movie, just not in the way I was expecting. Now I do like my comedies dark, but this is material that I didn't really feel was all that funny, which is something I'm finding myself saying a lot as I complete my 2017 recap.

Sure, you have characters that say wildly inappropriate things because they are just so incredibly low class, but there is something about seeing abuse to such a considerable extent that it understandably took me out of the laughing mood.

If there is a good thing that may come out of this, I hope it is people willing to have a conversation about domestic violence, because it is front and center for this entire movie, and there is no looking past it.

The two people that are most deserving of recognition in I, Tonya are Margot Robbie and Allison Janney. Allison Janney has always been great in the past, but here, she takes it to another level entirely, completely transforming and losing herself in the role.

I think she's a lock to win Best Supporting Actress, and she has earned it. Margot Robbie also kills it in her role as well. She may not 100% look like Tonya Harding, but much like Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, she completely embodies everything this person is all about.

This is all about how low human beings can stoop. You are essentially watching monstrous people be terrible to one another, and while it is always fascinating, I do have to say that it made it so that I was always watching this from a distance.

There are really two ways to go after you are raised with this much psychological damage: you either take your life in a completely different direction or you repeat what you were raised on, and going by this narrative, Tonya Harding split the difference and did a little bit of both.

This is an interesting character study that you should watch for its performances.