‘I, TONYA’ MOVIE
‘I, Tonya’ shows the human side of ’90s skating villain
TONYA HARDING is finally getting the applause she wanted.
And it took the snarky biopic “I, Tonya” to win it for her.
Back in the ’90s, the scrappy skater was desperate for gold medals — so desperate her team finally whacked rival Nancy Kerrigan in the knee.
Harding lost at the Olympics anyway. Then she lost a lot more, banned from the sport for life.
But “I, Tonya” — already a hit on the festival circuit — awards her a different kind of stardom and maybe even some sympathy.
Director Craig Gillespie does it by skating figure eights around the usual conventions. He lets Tonya, her ex-husband, her mother and other characters tell their stories. Most of them wildly conflict.
But not as violently as these people conflicted in real life.
In this telling, Tonya isn’t just trashy. She’s been trashed, by an abusive mother and a violent spouse. And then she’s dumped on again, by a press and public that turns this punching bag into a punch line.
It sounds depressing. But the movie — and its stars — tell the story with biting humor and big performances.
Margot Robbie is a revelation as Tonya, the tough working-class kid who was never going to be anybody’s idea of a pretty ice princess. Her eyes narrowed, her jaw clenched, she’s a won’t-back-down survivor, a constant, walking I-dare-you.
And that’s a challenge taken up by her foul-mouthed mother (an appalling and hilarious Allison Janney). And by Harding’s abusive loser husband Jeff Gillooly, played by a smartly cast-against-type Sebastian Stan.
They get the chance to tell their side of the story, too. And they’re eager to, interrupting scenes to turn directly to the camera with a flat, “This never happened.”
That gives the film a fast, funny, nasty edge, but the movie has its own serious point to make, too — that Harding was a victim long before Kerrigan, played by Caitlin Carver.
“Why me?” Kerrigan cried out when the thug bashed her.
Yeah, well, why not you? Harding wants to know. Why not someone else for a freakin’ change? You may not buy into that villainas-victim scenario, which blames everyone but Harding for what happened. (Ever laugh at a Tonya Harding joke? You’re guilty, too, the movie says.)
But even if it doesn’t make its heroine into the perfect role model the sport demanded, “I, Tonya” does make her into a living, breathing person. It proves there’s a real human being behind every headline.
And that may be worth its own medal.