‘Tully’ is the mother of all parenting movies: Messy, insane, satisfying
The maternally mercurial comedy/ drama Tully is for anyone who has ever experienced the sheer terror of being jolted out of a sleep-deprived slumber by a screaming baby, be they mom, dad or free-spirited nanny.
After a couple of mediocre outings, director Jason Reitman is back to his winning Up in the Air ways with Tully ( ★★★☆; rated R; in theaters nationwide Friday), which captures the complete exhaustion of parenthood in funny and profound fashion.
Reitman’s reunion with his Young Adult collaborators is key: Charlize Theron’s grounded performance digs into your soul as a dead-on-her-feet mom struggling to keep her head above water until she meets a helpful saint in a crop top, and Diablo Cody’s screenplay offers some of the clever sarcasm of earlier works like Juno with a touch of universal whimsy.
You don’t have to spend much time with Marlo (Theron) to feel her fatigue. She juggles having two kids while extremely pregnant, and her struggles get more Herculean once her new daughter, Mia, is born. Her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), takes frequent business trips, but even when he’s home he has video games and sleeping at the top of his priority list. And son Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who’s prone to meltdowns and shows signs of being special-needs, is labeled “quirky,” “out of the box” and “not the right fit” by his school. (Marlo unleashes blistering rage on the principal in one particularly satisfying scene.)
Marlo’s wealthy brother Craig (Mark Duplass) gifts her a night nanny, so Marlo can get some needed sleep. And Tully (Mackenzie Davis) swoops in like a Forever 21 Mary Poppins: Marlo initially is weirded out by this enigmatic girl who knows way too much about solar days on Jupiter, plus she doesn’t want to be
seen as a poor parent. But she instead finds a new BFF she can talk to about her lack of a sex life and love of bad reality TV in between Tully taking care of Mia and baking cupcakes.
The relationship helps Marlo reconnect with herself, and Cody’s dialogue and Theron’s delivery are pitch-perfect in jump-starting the character’s personality. Carrying around a big baby belly, Marlo compares herself to an “abandoned trash barge” and informs Tully that she’s a “book of fun facts for unpopular fourth-graders.”
That snark resonates rather than repels because it comes from an authentic emotional center. But a lot of Tully’s success comes from the expressions Reitman pulls from his actors, with communication conveyed through knowing looks between brothers-in-law or the melancholy Theron wears when Marlo visits an old neighborhood bar.
Tully freshens up familiar themes and offers a big story twist that has angered mental health advocates. It works mostly in context, though it introduces some inconsistencies in the narrative, which blows opportunities for character development. And the movie loses some of its poignancy as Marlo’s focus shifts from family to adventures with the effervescent Tully.
More successful is how the film explores postpartum health and other struggles parents face, especially mothers. Tully nails how every parent needs to maintain identity and some semblance of sanity amid spilled breast milk and sleepless nights, plus delivers on the occasional hilarity that ensues when raising kids — the levity that keeps it all from being overwhelming.