I, Tonya (2017)

Jack and I loved this dark comedy about the real Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding, her toxic childhood, and not much better adulthood, including the 1994 bashing of her rival Nancy Kerrigan's knee, which Harding did not do herself. That's not a spoiler--look it up.

Margot Robbie (last blogged for Goodbye Christopher Robin) and Allison Janney (after Get On Up we've enjoyed her work in nine episodes of Masters of Sex and almost 100 of Mom) are brilliant as Tonya and her abusive mother LaVona. I mean no disrespect to the fine acting of Sebastian Stan (most recently in The Martian) as her husband Jeff and McKenna Grace (last in Gifted) as young Tonnie. Harding, born in late 1970, is now making the rounds with the stars at the awards ceremonies (photo). The character of Jeff's creepy and delusional best friend Shawn is played by Paul Walter Hauser (new to me but with about 30 credits), apparently very much like the real guy.

Director Craig Gillespie (covered in Million Dollar Arm) keeps the tempo going from the script by Steven Rogers (Hope Floats (1998), Stepmom (1998), and more), which was written with Janney in mind for LaVona and made the 2016 Black List of best unproduced screenplays of the year. Imdb mentions that the movie breaks the fourth wall, which means that the characters speak directly to the camera. That's because the script is adapted from interviews with the actual people.

Reading the imdb trivia items, I learned that, since almost no one else could perform triple axels (Harding's signature feat), the filmmakers employed computer-generated images (CGI). I guess there are a few who can, including one newcomer, but they're a little busy (see article). Also, Janney does not love birds, but had to recreate the original video interviews with LaVona with a pet bird perched on her shoulder and the least bad one, named Little Man, occasionally pecked at her ear while the camera was running. I laughed out loud at Janney's little companion (scroll down to the fourth image) at the Globes.

Peter Nashel's (I did see Bee Season (2005) and a few episodes each of Dirty Sexy Money and all of his 12 of Younger) music isn't well represented on the spotify playlist and you likely will better remember the many songs.

Though the movie has been out for six weeks (we saw it on the 5th) Rotten Tomatoes shows a critics' average of 89% and 96% "want to see." We are big fans. Sufferers of Motion Picture Motion Sickness, or MPMS, be advised to sit in the back and/or medicate, as the camera will swing occasionally. Don't run out of the room (DVD and streaming expected in March) before the credits or you'll miss some of the actual interview footage.