A TURN FOR THE WORSE
McCarthy’s ‘Tammy’ goes off track
Inside of “Tammy” is a wilder, crazier, better movie trying to come out. That it stars the hilarious Melissa McCarthy is both its saving grace — and a source of incredible frustration.
Following an Oscar-nominated turn in “Bridesmaids” and outrageous co-star roles in last year’s “Identity Thief” and “The Heat,” this should have been McCarthy’s moment to grab the comedy-superstar reins. Instead, she feels reined in. The irony is that McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone, wrote this script, and Falcone directed.
When we first see Tammy Banks (McCarthy), she’s rocking out to ’80s music, driving down an Illinois highway — and runs smack into a deer.
Rolling in to work late, Tammy is fired by her snippy boss (Falcone in a fun cameo). At home, she finds her husband (Nat Faxon) having a cozy lunch with a neighbor (Toni Colette). Deciding she’s had enough, the combustible Tammy walks two houses down and tells her mom (Allison Janney) that she needs to take her grandma Pearl’s car and get out of small-town own Murphysboro. boro. She gets the he car, but doesn’t n’t count on Pearl (Susan Susan Sarandon) coming with her on a road trip.
The squabbling uabbling pair decide to head to o Niagara Falls, but make a wrong rong turn and go to Missouri. Encouraged to “have a little fun” by her hard-drinking, randy grandma, Tammy takes a Jet Ski out on a lake (l.), wrecks it and is forced to buy it. Needing money, Tammy robs a fast-food restaurant in the movie’s funniest scene.
Driving east to Kentucky, they stop at a honky-tonk bar, where Pearl hooks up with smooth old Earl (Gary Cole) as Tammy flirts with Earl’s niceguy son, Bobby (Mark Duplass).
Later, the women arrive at a “lesbian Fourth of July party” hosted by Pearl’s cousin Lenore (Kathy Bates) and her girlfriend Suzanne (Sandra Oh, who, given little to do, just keeps stretching out her arms free-spiritedly). It’s here that Tammy is given a pep talk by Lenore to stop whining and do something with her life, as Pearl confronts her drinking problem.
“Tammy” had potential. McCarthy’s first scenes are a classic comedy outcast-loser introduction, like Bill Murray’s in “Stripes.” p But it q quickly y meanders, losing steam until the long sojourn at the lesbian party. Sarandon is up for anything,
as usual, but her character, Pearl, is simply thrown on screen, a cliched old rabble-rouser in a dowdy wig. Duplass, Bates, Janney and Dan Aykroyd (in a cameo as Tammy’s dad) are similarly underused in roles that feel underwritten. We barely get to know Tammy herself, for all her bitching and moaning.
Yet when the film sets things up right, McCarthy lets loose. Her goofy badass dance moves as Tammy prepares for the robbery are a slow-motion ballet of silliness, combining the gracefulness of Jackie Gleason with the cluelessness of Will Ferrell. She conveys a Middle American stubbornness — and a very real sense of everyday outrage — that explodes when confronted by dumb authority. Her willingness to look absurd for the sake of a sight gag is rare and admirable.
McCarthy’s a force of nature. If only the shambling “Tammy” was worth her effort.
jneumaier@nydailynews.com