I, Tonya (2017)

Biopics typically err in one big way: they don’t feel true to the characters they portray and have that typical “Oscar-bait” tone. Films like The Imitation Game, The Theory of Everything, and even Hacksaw Ridge have all fallen into this mold; it’s not that they’re bad films, but they just don’t try to do anything but tell a positive story about their main character’s life. They are bland, plain and simple.

Thankfully, I, Tonya doesn’t fit this mold at all. It follows more in the vein of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short in how it treats its subjects: there’s a lot of witty dark humor, and the tone is very much snarky sometimes but then gets a lot more serious as the story does. My problems with those two films I mention is that they can’t find the balance between the comedy and the drama, Wolf of Wall Street erring towards comedy and Big Short towards drama.

I, Tonya has a smoother transition between those two tones, but it still does feel a bit abrupt, and that was my main issue with the film. The film tells the story of Tonya Harding’s skating career, detailing her upbringing, training, and of course the incident with Nancy Kerrigan that led to her exiting the sport. The transition between the tones would seem to come right when the discussion of the Kerrigan incident begins, but it doesn’t; instead, the film waits until the legal drama surrounding it starts to get serious. I see why it was done this way, and it actually is quite a good idea; however, it doesn’t flow quite as smoothly as I would have liked. That being said, outside of the transition itself, director Craig Gillespie does have a firm grasp on how the film should feel and helms it very well, adding documentary-like interview segments in between the narrative.

Those segments are where some of the great performances in this film get icing on their cake. Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, and Sebastian Stan all do excellent work here, each of them some of the best of their respective careers. Robbie goes outside her mold here – something I was not expecting from the film’s marketing – and gives an incredibly human portrayal of Harding that makes the audience really sympathize with her throughout. Janney is one of the big reasons we can do so – her role as Tonya’s mother is an exercise in tough love that I have not seen done this well in any film except last year’s Lady Bird. Stan does more subtle work as Tonya’s ex-husband that is often overshadowed by the former two, but he is still worth noting for the way he amps up his character’s seemingly bipolar nature.

Overall, I, Tonya is a truly entertaining biopic in a way few films are; it matches its tone well to its subject and pairs that with great casting. It does have some trouble switching between its lighter and more serious moments, but that misstep is largely forgotten when in the thick of either of those two portions of the film. It, more so than most films of its type, is a good time at the movies.

My recommendation: It’s worth seeing.

My grade: 88/100