Tammy Review

After losing her job and learning that her husband has been unfaithful, a woman hits the road with her profane, hard-drinking grandmother.

Before seeing the film I hadn’t seen a lot of advertising or trailers, so it wasn’t sure what to expect.  After viewing it I felt as if the film was missing something. The story meandered, the plot was weak, and the laughs were few and far in-between.  I am starting to worry that they are burning out Melissa McCarthy as this is probably her worst outing yet. I know as a comedic actress she is hit or miss for a lot of people.  She’s not my favorite but I enjoy a few scenes in her movies for the most part and loved her in Bridesmaids. My only problem is that it feels like once you’ve seen one Melissa McCarthy film, you’ve seen them all. It’s as if she can’t hold down a movie on her own since she’s constantly paired with other major stars; Jason Bateman in Identity Thief,  Sandy B (love her) in The Heat, and now Susan Sarandon in Tammy all come to mind.  I’d like for her to take a step back and come up with more clever and original material.  It’s hard to do that if you’re pressured to come out with a movie or two every year.  The quality will inevitably suffer.

Susan Sarandon was the best part of the film, but a large part of that goes back to my own curiosity of how well she could pull off being a drunken grandma.  Considering that there’s only a 24 year age gap between Sarandon and McCarthy I found it a little unbelievable that she’d be her grandmother.  I don’t know why she couldn’t just be a dysfunctional mom or aunt.  They did a good job of making her look elderly, but we all know she can still clean up well.   I thought they could have utilized the supporting characters a bit more. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh were nice additions, but we didn’t get nearly enough of them in the film.  If this movie was based on a road trip with McCarthy, Sarandon, Bates, and Oh would have been much more entertaining.  The run time is on the shorter side being only 96 minutes, but it felt long enough.

All in all there have definitely been better comedies out this year but the film has its moments.  If you really like Melissa McCarthy films then this will probably be the film for you, but if you don’t enjoy her films then this won’t be an exception.

They did a cute little marketing stint for it here in my area. They gave away apple pies from a “TopperJack” stand; it’s Tammie’s job location in the film which was a source of a particularly pivotal and comedic scene. The pie tasted like what you’d get at McDonalds.  I took a snapshot of it. apple pie

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