Tully is equal parts brilliant and infuriating.
WRITER DIABLO CODY’S FINAL ACT IS EQUAL PARTS BRILLIANT AND INFURIATING
Tully
Someone in academia needs to do a study on what I’m going to call The Tully Effect. First, calculate the weekly box-office numbers of this latest from director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult). Then look at the birth statistics for nine months later. I’m guessing the higher the first number, the lower the second.
Charlize Theron stars as exhausted new mother Marlo. She already has two kids. Emmy looks to be about 10 and tells it like it is: “What’s wrong with your body?” she says of her mom’s post-pregnancy shape. Jonah is in kindergarten and has behavioural issues. The school labels him “quirky,” but you can tell they’d prefer something harsher.
Early scenes show Theron’s character suffering the slings and arrows of public reprobation — a woman in the coffee shop tells the still-pregnant Marlo that decaf still contains caffeine — followed by delivery indignity, and then a montage of sleepless childcare that will have young couples thinking twice about going down that road. This is a comedy with a hard, bitter twist of drama.
But everything changes when Tully (Mackenzie Davis) swoops in like a modern-day Mary Poppins. Suggested by Marlo’s wealthy-as-bleep brother (Mark Duplass), Tully is a night nanny, showing up just as the sun goes down and helping Marlo sleep through the night.
Presumably she’s also helping hubby Drew (Ron Livingston), but he tends to slumber through most of the baby’s crying, and anyway he doesn’t have the equipment to feed her.
Tully is almost too good to be true, full of fun facts and homespun wisdom. “She’ll grow a little overnight,” she says of the baby. “So will we.” She’s beautiful in body and mind, perfectly lit, and backed by a superb soundtrack that includes an amazing cover of You Only Live Twice. Tully is the Sully of baby care, a hero who rescues both mother and child.
This being a movie, I started to wonder about halfway through its 96 minutes what drama would evolve to drive the plot forward. Certainly there are some cracks in Tully’s demeanour — she often arrives famished, at one point suggesting that Marlo join her for sangria. And when she starts making suggestions for Marlo and Drew in the bedroom, you know a line has been crossed. On the other hand, uninterrupted sleep! You can forgive a lot for that.
Marlo kids her at one point that she feels like she’s in a movie where the nanny tries to kill everyone, and the mother survives but has to walk with a cane. This definitely isn’t one of those movies. In fact, only Cody knows what kind of movie this is — she just isn’t telling us openly until a final-act reveal that is equal parts brilliant and infuriating.
Even so, this is her strongest screenplay since Juno, and Reitman handles it with a delicacy missing in his recent parenting-themed movies Labor Day and Men, Women & Children. If you’ve already crossed the great parental divide you may enjoy it a touch more. At the very least, it won’t scare you into not taking the plunge; your Tully moment has come and gone. ★★★½ Tully opens across Canada on May 4.