I, Tonya is a 2017 biography/drama film directed by Craig Gillespie and follows the life of figure skater Tonya Harding and her connection to the 1994 attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan. The film stars Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale and many more.
So sort of a quick review for you all as I was generally surprised by this film. Although I wasn’t blown away I can’t say that I wasn’t surprised when this film was nominated for a few Oscars. I, Tonya does a lot of things right, and a lot of things just alright. There were only a few parts in the film that really amazed me, but for the most part I just thought this was an average film with some extra ordinary parts to it.
So to start things off, I really wanted to talk about the cast. Although this film stars Margot Robbie, Allison Janney stole the screen every time she came up on it. Her character was amazing, deep, well rounded, and cold, which Janney did such a great job portraying. She really did a phenomenal job with this film and would definitely be my pick for best supporting actress. As for the rest of the cast, they also did a pretty decent job. Stan and Robbie were good in their respective roles, and I did feel like they portrayed their characters to the best of their abilities. This movie does a great job at putting the spotlight on these awful relationships and really makes you feel for the characters, even when you know a majority of the film was overdramatized.
As for the story, I thought it was just decent. Sure it is definitely unique in its way of storytelling as it pulls a mockumentary style while breaking the fourth wall, but I personally didn’t find it to be that ideal. How would I have done it? No clue. There’s no other way to do this film other than the way they ended up doing it. It would need a complete rewrite to be told in another medium.
So things that really bothered me about this film was definitely the CGI used. My god that was some of the worst CGI I have ever seen. For those who don’t know, Robbie is not an actual ice skater, so a lot of the time they had to digitally add Robbie’s face onto an actual skater. Although that doesn’t sound like it would be too difficult, it seemed to be rocket science for the visual effects team apart of this film. My god, I would have rather of seen better cutting to remove the need for CGI in the first place, but yeah.. that didn’t happen.
To close things up for my short review, I, Tonya was a decent film. Although I found myself decently entertained, I did find myself thinking of ways that they could have made a better film. Although the story is told through a unique medium, it definitely didn’t seem to have as much of an emotional effect as I was hoping for. With that being said, I, Tonya had some great performances from an incredible cast, even if its CGI was some of the worst I’ve seen since The Mummy. In closing, I decided to give I, Tonya an “Alright” on theVade Review Bar. I really hate giving it that kind of score after loving Janney’s performance so much, but sorry to say the movie is called I, Tonya not I, Janney.
