Tammy

If you were wondering what that noise was last Friday night, it was probably the collective sigh of ‘Why am I surprised’ mixed in with a general feeling of ennui and disappointment. At the source of this wave of ‘meh’ was a new film starring Melissa McCarthy called Tammy, out now on Blu-Ray and DVD. It's a film about her driving across America with some ‘hilarious’ other characters. There aren’t very many movies featuring Melissa McCarthy of late wherein the phrase “…but eventually the mismatched pair begin to…” fails to appear in the description. Identity thief, The Heat and Tammy are all variations on an already tired out theme. Like the last three films she was in, thank god for digital film-making at least there was no actual film wasted in the creative process. 

Tammy (McCarthy) starts off her film of hijinks by going to work only to suddenly find herself sacked. Ha ha ha, ho ho ho. She then finds herself driving home when her car breaks down making it even harder for her to get home. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. But if you find that funny, hold on to your laughter-release hats. When she eventually gets home she catches her husband having a romantic meal with another woman. Oh ho ho. Ha ha ha. Then…wait I can’t breathe…then she goes to her mums house which is..ha ha ha…two doors away… ha ha ha. I don’t understand why any of this is supposed to be funny. By 2014 there are newborn children watching this thinking that it’s derivative, because we've seen it hundreds of thousands of times, in films, TV shows and insurance adverts.

Then she illustrates her immaturity by being mean to her grandparents, driving recklessly and just behaving like a terrible person. This is all so that we can understand when she becomes a better person later on. With films like this it has become a sketch show. A collection of scenes that are interchangeable between films decorated with bad dialogue and a smugness that wrenches liquid hatred from my stomach. 

So from here we have:

• The fun scene.
• The let down scene.
• The every things OK again scene.
• The ‘funny’ scene that’s in the trailer.
• The sad scene. (Also known as the Hollywood drop-off where all of the consequences of the previous scenes happen at once followed by everything being OK because of some stupid gesture.)

And the ‘eventually the mismatched pair begin to get on real well scene’. This is usually were learning, personal growth and ‘the moral of the story’ comes in.

Tammy just was a whirlwind of mediocrity patronising everyone by constantly reminding us that bigger women can be attractive too. The unattractive thing about her in the film is not that she is a bigger size than American culture would have us believe is conventionally attractive, but more that she is acting like a total dick most of the time. Abandoning relatives, sponging off her family, being lazy and horrible to people is why her husband left her. It makes it hard to feel sorry for her at the bad bits and hard to feel she deserved all the good stuff at the end. If nothing else referring to ‘Duane Allman’ as the lesser Allman brother earned her no respect.

I struggle to write anything about it because it’s terrible. Enjoy.

Tammy is an awful person in an awful movie and gets a 2/5.

★★☆☆☆

Dave Roberts 

Tammy at CeX

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