It successfully elicits sympathy for an infamous person

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2018)

Based on a true story: Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is an American figure skater who was linked to the 1994 injury on her fellow American rival Nancy Kerrigan. Harding's hardship life is depicted before and leading to the event including abusive relationships with her mother LaVona (Allison Janney) and later with her husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan).
Anyone who had access to television at the time would recall this event and the attempts to link the Kerrigan attack to Harding. The forecasts seemed endless and were a staple in the vulgarization of the 1990s. In giving the chance for the deeper story to be told, "I, Tonya" does the impossible: it humanizes someone whose name had been reduced to a punchline and shows that nobody ever starts out as "bad" (though the same could not be said for LaVona - at least as depicted here). It also makes one question how much guilt Harding had in the attack and whether or not her eventual punishment was fair.
"I, Tonya" is another fine film that shows the result of class prejudice. While Tonya was a great figure-skater, she had a hard time winning the hearts of judges who seemed to dismiss her as "white trash".
Robbie is superb in the title role. She easily draws sympathy as someone who worked through terrible hardships to make the best of her life even if she made some terrible decisions. Janney, who is winning multiple awards, can be quite funny at times as a vile, despicable, creature from hell but the role is under-developed. There is never a moment when we see LaVona in a light makes one understand her beastliness or even the slightest moment of goodness. When all is said and done, is it really "funny" to see a parent abuse her child as she does?
The courage in telling this story is also a challenge to the encouragement of chasing the American Dream. In this case, the dream ended up as a nightmare. After viewing this film, one can't help but re-evaluate one's own judgments against Tonya Harding. Kudos to the filmmakers for that.