Review of I, Tonya (2017) by Maria M — 02 Jan 2018

There needs to be legislation put in place to ban Norman Greenbaum's 1969 single "Spirit in the Sky" from movie soundtracks. It's been in over 50 films, and it has become like a Pavlovian trigger for me to immediately start hating a film.

You can tell director Craig Gillespie is going for the all-American pop movie based on the fact that he seems to have left his favorite FM classic rock station playing in lieu of a more discerning playlist.

Doing my damnedest to ignore that, I really enjoyed this film. While the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading was divisive upon release, it was a great dark comedy facilitated by its woefully stupid characters and their hyperbolically poor decisions.

I, Tonya brings to mind that movie's tone and style of humor. This is made doubly dark by the fact that it's been culled from the perspectives and accounts of the actual people involved in the Harding/Kerrigan media blitz that rocked the mid 90's.

There's something more to it than The Big Short / The Wolf of Wall Street fourth-wall breaking biopic that Margot Robbie is typecast for. It's an exploration of abuse - emotional, physical, familial, spousal, and societal.

At the heart of the abuse is Tonya's mother, expertly played by Allison Janney in one of the best supporting roles of 2017. Harding's traumatic upbringing and scrappy roots pervasively impacted every hurdle of her rise in the figure skating world, making her accomplishments that much more triumphant and her downfall all the more devastating.

Amidst the hilarity and tragedy of these awful people, the splendor of her talent does not go unappreciated with the beautifully fluid performance shots on the ice of both Robbie (with the aid of CG and stunt actors) and clips of Harding herself at the end.