Review of Tammy (2014) by Shilo_Sixx — 29 Aug 2014

Melissa McCarthy stars in her first lead role and is a comedy mess for starters.

It's about a woman named Tammy (Melissa McCarthy) who ends up losing her job at a fast food joint. She discovers her husband is cheating on her with the next door neighbour so she packs her clothes and walks two houses down to her mothers house. Soon after, she decides to move away but doesn't have her car or money. Her alcoholic Grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), does and tags along for the ride to Niagara Falls with a lot of booze. After falling off track and a series of misadventures that land her in hot water, she begins to re-think her life all the while dealing with her out of control grandmother who is more trouble to handle sober then she is drunk.

Melissa became well know for her role in Bridesmaids and she made us howl laughing with Identity Thief. Her new movie Tammy is an unpleasant comedy that has no story, no evolution to it and jumps from one thing to another and continues throughout the whole film.

Aside from the fact that it does seriously make you laugh throughout the movie, because of Tammy, the jokes are all one liners and they mostly come from her while Susan Sarandon is unfunny as her booze guzzling grandmother. The whole character is played out on laughs because she has booze hidden everywhere and it runs dry very fast. The story drags on from one thing to another while it slows to explain events of the character's life and why they don't like each other then continues on with the same thing.

The one thing about the film that drags is that Tammy is made out to look like a slobbish piggy loser. It also attacks her weight in seriously insulting scenes that make you feel bad for the character because she wants to be human like everyone else. While everything goes wrong for her, they make her feel even worse about herself by calling her a "Cheeseburger" and "Fat slob" and it is not funny at all to watch. Melissa McCarthy is a beautiful woman and to have scenes of this nature in the film, because she is a bigger woman, is a poor excuse for jokes and ends up making you shake your head in disbelief and disgust.

It seems like this was her dream project because she wrote it with her husband Ben Falcone, who makes his debut as well, but the acting to it is shaky and alone Melissa pulls off the acting to the movie. Kathy Bates just hangs in the shadows in some scenes and offers advice to Tammy about her life and then she even falls short soon after along with Susan who is a drunk mess.

It's sad to see actors/actresses who are very well known, fall short in their roles and look like it is their first time on screen from either little screen time or due to bad writing that makes them look foolish. Granted, it does have laughs and will make you howl but if you look at the overall of the film, it's a wild mess that makes you wonder what happened and Melissa is the only good thing to watch for the film. She proves she can do comedy alone and make you laugh with her crude and foul mouth.

Tammy is a mess and not what was expected. It's good for a few laughs but other pictures are a lot better and funnier.