SEMI-BEAUTIFUL LOSERS
I, Tonya cast brings Olympic performances to this wonderfully made guilty pleasure
With the possible exception of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, you will not find a more guilty pleasure at the movies this season. A pleasure because Steven Rogers’ screenplay about the events surrounding the 1994 attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan is genuinely funny. And guilty because, well, Kerrigan.
Margot Robbie plays Tonya Harding with a gleam of madness in her eye. Harding was innocent of what everyone in the movie refers to as “the incident.” That is, she didn’t swing the telescopic baton that injured Kerrigan. But her role in the attack — which involved her husband, her selfproclaimed bodyguard, and a couple of goons who did the actual legwork — earned her a lifetime ban from professional skating.
Robbie is amazing in the role — how many ways can you say “please love me?” — but the main attraction in the movie has to be Allison Janney as Tonya’s mother, LaVona. With her salty language and a parakeet perched on her shoulder, she looks like a pirate’s grandmother. She is truly a piece of work, whereas everyone else in the film is merely a piece of ... something else.
Sebastian Stan plays Jeff Gillooly, Tonya’s redneck husband. Paul Walter Hauser is Shawn Eckhardt, who fancies himself a counter-terrorist expert and bodyguard, but whose bat cave is his mom’s basement. Bobby Cannavale plays Martin Maddox, a reporter for Hard Copy, the
quintessence of ’90s tabloid TV. And Julianne Nicholson is Diane Rawlinson, Tonya’s longtime, often exasperated coach.
It’s a larger-than-life ensemble, and feels at times as if director Craig Gillespie gave each of his actors the same instruction — elbow your way to the front of this movie.
When Tonya’s mom first approaches the coach about taking on a new student, Diane asks how old this pipsqueak skater is. “She’s a soft four,” LaVona replies cagily. By the time the movie’s over, she’ll be a hard 23.
Tonya is also a hard case. Raised poor, she consistently argues with skating judges over what she perceives as unfair treatment. She fights with Jeff about everything, even snacks. She even argues with the audience, accusing us of being part of the problem that drove her to infamy.
But despite all this, there are moments where you can’t help but root for her. In 1991, at the U.S. nationals, she became the first American woman and only the second female in history to land a triple axel. The lead-up carries with it all the beats of the classic sports-movie climax, although it must be said that most underdog victories don’t end with a “f--- you.”
Things begin their real downward spiral soon afterward. Tonya receives a death threat at a practice rink, which gets Jeff thinking that maybe Kerrigan should get one, too — and then Shawn picks up the ball and runs with it, past the end-zone of illegality, and into history.
It helps that Kerrigan wasn’t permanently disabled by the attack. So if comedy is tragedy plus time, and that time is now pushing 25 years, and the tragedy wasn’t that huge to begin with — well, you’ve got to laugh. Good luck trying not to.