Glib Retelling of a Sensational Story

Rating: 7/10 (5 January 2018)

I remember well the whole Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story (I was just graduating from high school when it all went down), and I was very intrigued to see how a movie would portray it all. At the time, I mostly just remember being done with the whole thing by the time it had played itself out. I was so sick of everybody involved, Kerrigan included, and it all just seemed so sleazy and embarrassingly American. The movie made me feel much the same way. These were trashy people living a trashy life style doing trashy things, and despite the film's clear intention to do so, it isn't able to wring much moral significance from the whole episode.
Margot Robbie does a fine job in the lead role, avoiding the temptation to do a simple impersonation and instead trying her hardest to turn Tonya Harding into a three-dimensional character. The film limits her success, however, because of its dogged determination to remain glib and cartoonish and play the whole thing like a big joke that the audience is in on. This is weirdly at odds with choices the director, Craig Gillespie, makes at various points in the movie, like giving Tonya monologues about how she's a different person than the media would have us believe, or one uncomfortable scene during which Robbie addresses the movie audience directly and tells us that we collectively are as responsible for persecuting Harding as her abusive husband or monstrous mother. If handled differently, moments like these could have made this film a reflexive examination of America's unhealthy relationship with the media and its obsession with fame, however earned. But the movie is too eager to be a crowd pleaser to dwell for long on anything too serious, so it rushes on to its next bit of comedy and ends up doing to Tonya Harding exactly what it accuses its audience of.
In addition to Robbie, Allison Janney is getting a heap of acclaim for her performance as Harding's mother, an absolute horror of a woman. She hits the marks she's asked to hit, but it's a shame that such a talented actress as Janney isn't given more to work with than the gross caricature she's given here. On the other hand, Sebastian Stan, as Tonya's buffoon of an on-again-off-again husband, gives a great performance that no one seems to be talking about.
"I, Tonya" is entertaining, but it doesn't deserve to be remembered in the same company as some of the best films of 2017.
Grade: B+