Directed by: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Caitlin Carver, Bobby Cannavale
If the story of figure skater Tonya Harding and her band of would-be criminals didn't exist, you would have to invent it. But, could it be invented? Who could make this stuff up? As Tonya (Robbie) tells us in I, Tonya, "I went from loved, to hated, to a punchline," She is pretty much right about that. All anyone remembers is the attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan in early 1994, and not that Harding overcame her redneck background (her words, not mine) to succeed in a sport in which presentation means us much, or more, than technical skill. Harding's problem wasn't her abilities, but her lack of couth and class which so apparently permeated from her that it was hard to sway the judges to recognize her talent. As fate would have it, once Harding began to receive respect from the figure skating world, her dumb ass ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Stan) concocts a harebrained scheme to take out Nancy Kerrigan and effectively ended Harding's skating career. Thanks for nothing, Jeff.
I, Tonya is funny, briskly paced, and sympathetic to Harding to an extent. She was already behind the eight ball thanks to her gruff, chain-smoking mother LaVona (Janney), whose idea of being supportive is to remind Tonya of how much money she spends on her training and putting her down at every turn. LaVona says she wants to toughen Tonya up, but we soon see her mistreatment of Tonya is rooted in jealousy and resentment. Tonya has a unique gift which her mother never had and has a chance to escape her humble roots, which her mother never will. The main players are all interviewed and break the fourth wall to address the audience. LaVona has such a bruised ego, she laments that "my storyline is coming to an end," Did Tonya ever really have a chance?
Tonya thought her savior came in the unfortunately mustached Jeff, who is the only guy Tonya ever dated up to that point and was soon suffering physical abuse thanks to his hot temper. Of course, Jeff says Tonya abused him. One of the funnier aspects of I, Tonya is how each person can't seem to accept fault for their issues. Nothing is ever Tonya's fault, from a poor competition showing to having her lace on her skate break. Jeff acts put upon and smarter than he was, while LaVona thinks of herself as a good mother.
The king of delusion, however, belongs to Shawn Eckhardt (Hauser), who is so unaware of his own stupidity, we laugh with almost every syllable that escapes his mouth. His is an obese hanger-on to Jeff who is asked to carry out the plan against Kerrigan and messes everything up from minute one. He calls himself Tonya's bodyguard, and the media not surprisingly referred to him as such. But as a criminal, he is as incompetent as they come. Hauser nearly steals the movie here in a movie teeming with great comic performances. I hope the academy recognizes him with an Oscar nomination.
Robbie's Tonya wears makeup as if she never wore it before or even heard of it. The makeup artists do their best to temper Robbie's physical beauty (which is almost impossible) by frizzying up her hair and applying freckles, but no one would ever mistake Robbie for Tonya Harding. Even if the physical appearance isn't similar, Robbie allows us to sympathize with Tonya despite her bad taste in friends and her crudeness, as much as we are able to sympathize with her. She wants to be loved and we see in her eyes how great it feels for her to be loved, whether by her mother, Jeff, or the public, but we also feel sad for her that such love is fleeting. Janney is hardly seen without a cigarette in her hand and allows us to understand LaVona without feeling bad for her. She is funny despite being thoroughly unlikable, which isn't an easy task.
Then, the movie arrives at the crime itself, in which two idiots hired by Shawn pull off the assault on Kerrigan's knee and may as well have left a trail of bread crumbs for the FBI to find them. Jeff's complicity is soon discovered, which wasn't that hard for the FBI to figure out either. You can almost see the snickering by the agents as these knuckleheads prove what criminals they aren't. The movie effectively answers whether Tonya knew about the attack beforehand. She did not, but she did know Jeff was masterminding some silly scheme to freak out Kerrigan by mailing threatening letters, which by the way is also against the law, although not in the Tonya Harding universe.
I, Tonya is narrated by its players as well as Bobby Cannavale as a Hard Copy reporter who covered the story and can't help but laugh at how insane the scandal was. It was the start of the 24-hour news cycle, he recalls, and the Harding scandal was just the thing to fill it. Harding become a name overnight, just not the way she wanted. The movie is told in a richly comic tone as both a biopic and a crime movie. Yes, the people are sad and pathetic, consistently undermining Tonya's rise to greatness whether intentionally or unintentionally, but I, Tonya wisely chooses to play the events for laughs. If you didn't know of the story already, you would think they were making it up anyway.
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