‘Eyes of Tammy Faye’ quite the garish spectacle
I did not want to spend time with raccoon-eyed Tammy Faye Bakker and her criminal preacher husband Jim Bakker when they were alive, and that hasn’t changed since their deaths. But “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” a fictionalized version of the 2000 documentary directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato and narrated by RuPaul, is upon us, and here goes.
Directed by filmmaker-comedian-actor Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick”) and produced by Jessica Chastain, who also plays the title role, the new film opens with real footage telling us that Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were ”the Ken and Barbie of televangelism” in the era of Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell. Tammy and Jim meet at bible school, where Jim (Andrew Garfield) butts heads with the teacher because Bakker believes God wants Christians to be rich. After a scandalous dance on school grounds while Tammy sings Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” they marry, much to the dismay of Tammy’s pious mother Rachel (Cherry Jones), who was known to be “a harlot” before she got married, but was allowed into her Minnesota town’s Pentecostal church because she played piano.
Tammy, who has the idea of making and performing with puppets for the children in the audience, and Jim land at Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, where the ambitious Jim has the idea for the 700 Club, which Robertson (Gabriel Olds) later steals from him. Tammy enrages Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) when she insists on sitting at the men’s table at a party at the Robertsons.
What sets Jim and Tammy Bakker apart is that they are a team, and she is as important to their ministry as he. Chastain has Tammy’s shrill, Betty Boop-ish voice down all right as well as the clownish make-up and hair. There were times when I thought I was watching a spin-off of one of those Stephen Kingbased “It” films.
Tammy has a soft spot for fur coats and jewelry. She and her husband use the “pledges” they receive from their “prosperity gospel” TV show to build a lakefront mansion and live like royalty. Chastain, playing Tammy six months pregnant, eating in bed, drinking Diet Coke, surrounded by her dolls is a sight to see. Later, we will meet Disco Tammy.
Showalter combines real and fictional in montages. Tammy interviews someone about penis pumps on camera before her rapt studio audience. She also admirably shows more compassion to AIDS sufferers than any of the male figures in her Christian world. She comes to suspect that her husband may have homosexual longings. He will later become entangled in a payoff to a reported, unhappy lover, an unseen Jessica Hahn. “The secular press hates us,” is the constant Bakker refrain as they ask their “prayer warriors” to double their pledges. Chastain’s Tammy, a giggling gargoyle at the height of her addiction to pills, punctuates too many of her sentences with a mindless cackle, and she and most of the people around her cannot say the word God often enough, although their God would not approve of much of what they’re up to.
Inevitably, Jim and Tammy fall from grace. The trouble is they never had any.