Tammy
Within the first minutes of watching “Tammy” we see Melissa McCarthy’s character, Tammy (hilariously) hit a deer and coax it back to ‘life,’ get fired, come home early and see her husband with the neighbor. Only Melissa McCarthy could make those seemingly depressing events seem comical and though the movie is indeed a comedy, there isn’t really a depth to those events. She just has a hissy fit and packs up, going to her mother’s house (two doors down, which further exudes the fact that Tammy is slowly being smothered by her Podunk town) to gather her things and leave.
I don’t know how she does it, but through these first jam-packed minutes, the audience will fall in love with Tammy.
Apparently Tammy has tried to leave several times and this is just routine with her mother (Allison Janney), but after Grandma Pearl (Susan Sarandon), Grandma Pearl’s Cadillac, and Grandma Pearl’s wad of cash the adventure is real as they attempt to undo decades of unspoken feuds between the two of them and try to make their way to Niagara Falls meeting wonderful—albeit underdeveloped characters.
The great cast includes Mark Duplass, Kathy Bates, Gary Cole, Sandra Oh, and Toni Collette, but many of the characters are severely underwritten. For example, Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh are a lesbian couple that Tammy and her grandmother stay with while on the road and despite being a great help to the pair Kathy Bates’ character just talks about blowing things up and Sandra Oh walks around waving her hands because a lack of things to do and/or vision in the movie.
After “Bridesmaids,” “Identity Thief,” and “The Heat,” McCarthy has become increasingly popular and can pretty much make any movie she wants. So when she produced “Tammy” and co-wrote it with her husband (Ben Falcone)—who gets a cameo in the film as her nutty boss, there was definitely hype for when it came out. But besides the great cast and a few great moments “Tammy” ultimately flat lines.
I give it 4 stars out of 10.
