Tammy

This film tells the story of a woman who has a very bad day. She goes onto a road trip with her alcoholic grandmother, going wild and having fun.

I had high hopes for "Tammy" but it turned out not as funny as I expected. Tammy and her grandmother acts juvenile and irresponsible. They are just irritating and mean, and they aren't even funny. I'm a little shocked by Susan Sarandon going all out in playing an older woman, dying her hair gray and looking a bit fragile. That's not the usual character she plays! But still, she couldn't save the film from being a disappointment. Tammy's love interest is terrible too, he is so reserved to the point of being wooden.

This film is alright if you're very bored, but there might be other better films out there to pass time.

"You're at a crossroads. You could change your life." Tammy (McCarthy) has just lost her job and comes home to find her husband with another woman. She packs her things and decides to leave. Her grandmother (Sarandon) offers her money and her car if she takes her with her. The two set out on a road trip that doesn't always go smooth. This is a movie that I thought could go either way. The previews looked funny and I really like McCarthy but I was worried that the funniest parts were in the trailer. There were a lot of the best jokes in the trailer but there was still enough new stuff to make it funny. The movie also has a lot of heart and you end up feeling sorry for Tammy a lot throughout. As funny as McCarthy is Susan Sarandon almost steals the movie from her. I do think this was very funny and Melissa McCarthy was strong as always but I really think she is gonna have to diversify her roles or she will become too repetitive and lose a lot of her humor. Overall, funny and worth seeing. McCarthy is as funny as ever. I give this a B+.

I've been a huge supporter of comedic actress Melissa McCarthy so far, but this may be the break. I'll probably give her more chances, but this one's a bit of a flop. It's mostly due to the script, but it was written by McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone (who also directed). They really needed some help with their script. Frankly, the movie is largely plot less, never getting its story off the ground, and, worst of all, it's laughless. Identity Thief had a pretty awful script, too, but at least it brought the funny. The biggest problem here is that the story, as they have written it, should have been a dramedy. Instead, McCarthy and Falcone are not brave enough to embrace the dramatic aspects of the script. They're dead-set on making a stupid, slapstick, R-rated comedy, and they aren't going to let the audience feel any genuine emotion. Tammy begins with the protagonist (McCarthy) getting fired from her crappy, fast-food job only to go home and find her husband cheating on her. She walks a few houses down to her mom's house, swearing she's going to just leave. Her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) is sick of it at her daughter's house, too, so she decides to bankroll the operation. This movie would suck a whole lot more without Sarandon. She's actually quite excellent, and has some complexities (she's a major alcoholic, for one). What this movie needed to be about was the two of these people bonding. It has a certain charm when the two women are interacting. The problem is, neither of them is given enough background to characterize them. Every time they seem to be getting somewhere with either of the characters, like I said before, it feels like they get too afraid the audience might start to feel an emotion so they have Melissa McCarthy crash her jetski or something. And, again, like I said before, some of this crappiness in the script could have been alleviated if the film were just ever funny. There's one sequence, where McCarthy has to rob a fast food restaurant, which provides some laughs, but the entire sequence was played in the trailer. Since it was the only really funny sequence, I can't blame them. McCarthy's brazenness was funny in her last two movies, but she kind of cranks the obnoxiousness up to eleven, particularly near the beginning. Oh, and then there's the love interest, Mark Duplass. Man, are they ever unsure that they should allow him to have a romantic relationship with the overweight protagonist. Duplass himself always has a look on his face which says, "This is to fund my next mumblecore project," and the character only seems to exist to stand there and tell McCarthy that she's okay. He's very much equivalent to the personality-less, female love interests in every other movie that's been released this summer, except they seem to not be able to bring themselves to let the two form a romantic relationship on screen.

My second review focuses on the comedy of the weekend named Tammy. As I'm sure you have seen, Melissa McCarthy stars in this rambunctious tale where hilarious antics are sure to plague every second of this movie without any restraint from a censor bureau. From her track record though, we know that her movies have been pretty much the same basic structure, with only slight changes to her character and a different setting. Does Tammy fit into this mold, or is there something more in this film that makes it worthwhile. Read on to find out.

Seeing as Tammy is a comedy, let's start with the laughs this film has to offer. Tammy has a variety of comedy present in this film, all ridiculously silly and overacted as we tend to see in McCarthy's movies. From the very beginning, McCarthy plays her traditional character, hitting a deer in the first five minutes and coaching it through its recovery. You would think this set the stupid bar high, but it only gets stupider as one bad day starts an adventure full of cursing, insults, alcoholic stunts and awkward situations. Many of these scenes you have seen in the trailer, with a comedic kick happening moments after, which you most likely will predict. And through it all McCarthy does her same routine, screaming loudly and making over dramatic motions that take a long time to move on from. She is funny yes, but how much longer can I keep finding entertainment in the same character and laughs she provides. Yet for audience members like me, there are some other characters to help take the comedy reigns. Susan Sarandon playing a careless, alcoholic grandmother was very entertaining, her sarcasm and blunt delivery perfect to ground Tammy's vibrant nature, and provide a bit of a moral dilemma. Even better was Kathy Bates who was a blend of Tammy and Grandma Pearl, doing over the top stunts and yet very too the point with her lines. Often Bates character helped drive the story, helping develop characters with just a few catty phrases before calling in laughs.

Speaking of the dialogue, the writers did a nice job packing the script with a lot of diverse comedic styles. Screaming rants by Tammy are a mess of descriptions that lack any cohesive meaning, often just word vomiting all the thought in her head. Like most rated R movies, witty humor is replaced with curse laden one liners, that sometimes hit the mark and sometimes go soaring over head. Yet, there are some lines that had me laughing incredibly hard, in particular the description of Tammy to a bag of Cheetos and describing her life in a few comical means. Though for many audience members, it didn't matter what was said, for the generic comedy was gold in their eyes.

Story wise, it's simple, escaping a town full of bitter memories to go to Niagara falls to fulfill an old dream. Over the course of the movie, Tammy realizes the sources of her troubles come from within and instead of running she needs to face up to them. While retired, stale, and rather predictable, it is always nice to get a refresher in these life changing lessons, that can kick you hard enough to motivate you to implement them. Otherwise there are no twists, no real surprises, and really no dilemmas you haven't seen before. Such simplicity makes this a fun comedy, but again you can save yourself money and watch one of the other movies McCarthy has starred in.

There really isn't much else I can say about this movie, other than the camera work or sound quality are nicely done. The soundtrack is also filled with some rather good tunes, the opening song in particular made me bob in my seat. Overall Tammy is the same comedy you've seen again. Fans of this style will be rolling on the floor or screaming out loud, so these are the audience members I feel should see the movie. Otherwise skip the film and wait for it to come out on RedBox, unless you are looking for a way to beat the heat. Tammy is stupid, silly fun though, and certainly you will find some laughs and giggles in the writing.

Overall my scores for Tammy are:

Comedy: 5.5-6.0 Movie Overall: 5.0

Melissa McCarthy has risen to the forefront of female cinema comics, and I want to believe she deserves her place. Is she a better comedienne than Tina Fey, Amy Pohler, or Jenny Slate? No. She has secured her place ever since Bridesmaids as a potty-mouthed plus size who throws her weight and mouth around the screen like a weapon threatening anyone who thinks she is not comical.

She's not always so, at least in Tammy, in which she plays an underachieving rebel losing her fast food job and taking to the road with her grandmother, Pearl (Susan Sarandon), to escape that job loss and the loss of her husband, Greg (Nat Faxon), to neighbor Missi (Toni Collette).

Thelma and Louise this Tammy is not: Besides the regularity of curse words (McCarthy is one of the writers) that substitute for wit, the insults to seniors and fast-food workers are gratuitous. Tammy's 38 days in jail are treated like a light diversion, not the result of a serious fast-food robbery. I must remember, however, not to apply standards of common sense to comedy.

So it seems the writers have a difficult time deciding what tone-- between the comedy about a rotund lady on the lam and the serious issue of alcoholism. It seems they wanted both hilarity and poignancy—mostly they have neither.

One need look only at much better writing in other contemporary buddy films like the Jump Streets, where Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill have lines that bite and soothe and a chemistry that Sarandon and McCarthy strive for but don't always achieve. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid's chemistry and wit are superior, so too Sarandon and Davis in Thelma and Louise, and by the way, McCarthy and Bullock in Heat.

However, McCarthy suffers by comparison with heavyweights like Latifa, Kathy Bates, and maybe Roseanne Barr, who is a more direct comparison and at times better able to show range.

Susan Sarandon's portrayal of the alcoholic grandma is rarely humorous or poignant. Her flirting with a guy of a certain age is a good bit for her youthful old age, but the connection is forced under the umbrella of cute for an oldster.

Tammy is not a keeper in the buddy genre; perhaps McCarthy will engage Bullock again for a better brand of banter.