In 1994, the world of professional skating was hurled into the burgeoning tabloid TV landscape when an assailant clubbed skater Nancy Kerrigan and suspicion fell on another skater, Tonya Harding. The resulting media firestorm was like a runup to the O.J. trial.
Margot Robbie stars as Harding in the inside-out comedy I, Tonya, which opens next week. My review is at PopMatters:
“This is bullshit. I never did this,” Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) assures viewers in the meta-comedy I, Tonya just after she is seen unloading a blast of buckshot at her fleeing husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan). Not that most of us would blame her. At that point, we already saw Jeff beat her for saying the wrong thing, or just for being there. Before that there was a long stretch of verbal and emotional abuse from LaVona (Allison Janney), Tonya’s cold-eyed villain of a mother. So this is somebody who had good reason to pick up a shotgun and let fly…
Tonya Harding rises through the ranks of competitive figure skating only to find disgrace when her husband tries to eliminate her rival.
This film is cleverly done. It is done as a dark comedy like “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom” and “To Die For”. What both films did was take a comic look at a true life event. “I Tonya” is cut from the same cloth.
The acting in this film is great but Allison Janney is sorely missed when she is not on the screen.
LikeLike