zalessky

...and it is not all that bad.

I'm reading reviews that says that it is not a 2022 movie, and it certainly isn't. It's filmed and scripted as a 1990s television crime fiction, and it does its job fairly well. Alyssa Milano's performance is capturing. Detective story is simple but okay. Filming locations are old school to the extreme. Dominatrix themes... well, you might enjoy the looks.

This movie is far from perfect, but it's made for nostalgia, and should be treated as such. It's good to relax and it's good to fall asleep to. Netflix should have things like that in its portfolio.

It could have been a great social commentary on mindfulness, or it could be a nice comedy on people who take the subject of enlightenment too seriously. The movie tries to stay in between, and that doesn't work too well.

Mocumentary as a way of presentation makes no sense. Claire, the protagonist, is presented as a barely educated young woman who can't tell Korean from Japanese or Indian Indians from First Nation Indians. After that, her attempts to trick *mindfulness experts* into saying stupid things on camera don't feel convincing. This movie's creators (including Micaela Wittman, who pays Claire and is a co-director) try to mock everything and eventually achieve nothing.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye may have moments of good acting and intense emotions, but it all pales in comparison to how it handled the main story related to real-life PTL and Jim Bakker:

STORY OF JESSICA HAHN.

Jessica was a church secretary in 1981 when, according to her testimony, she was drugged and raped by Jim Bakker and John Wesley Fletcher, another televangelist from PTL (played in the movie by Louis Cancelmi). Later she was paid off $280,000 for her silence using the PTL funds. Jim Bakker claimed that the sex was consensual.

Jessica Hahn is only referred to as "that girl" in the movie. She's first mentioned in a scene after the Steve Peters interview where Tammy Faye is seen genuinely sobbing. The receptionist complains that there's a woman who's bothering the whole crew with calls. Apparently, they call her "the shrieker". Faye calms down the receptionist and dismisses the whole thing as a "prank".

This and all further mentions look like mockery rather than trying to do justice to Jessica Hahn's claims. It seems as if Jim Bakker forbid the producers to mention Hahn's name when he sold the story. At least that's the only explanation I can think of. (Jim is still alive and has been sued in 2020 for promoting Silver Solution as covid treatment.)

Jim and Tammy are shown as kids who never grow up. They can't be held accountable for anything they do, cause they do everything as God wants them to. It may look funny but it's not satire: the movie is dead serious about making them good guys who challenge church establishment on the issues of feminism and gay rights. Apparently, if you do some good, rape and theft become minor altercations.