Up to today I was all for Holly Hunter to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in “The Big Sick” but now, hands down, Allison Janney owns it for her mean mother of all mothers in “I, Tonya”.

“I, Tonya” could have been an excellent movie but there are too many brutal shots of first Tonya Harding being abused physically and mentally by her mother and then too many of her husband physically abusing her. Two to three scenes would have gotten the message across but director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Steven Rogers not only have too many abusive scenes but spend too much time on a lot of scenes.

The movie is told from 4 different points of view and one is not sure who is telling the truth or lying. Though the main story revolves around Tonya Harding’s (Margot Robbie) training from the age of 3 to be an ice skater and then how much involved she was with the kneecapping of her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, to what made her become—to quote Tonya—‘the most hated woman in the world’ we also hear from the others who were part of her life.

LaVona Golden (Allison Janney), as Tonya’s mother, is really a despicable woman who, for the right or wrong reasons, spent every penny she made to make her daughter a star. LaVonna defends herself as trying to make her daughter tough and tries to warn her daughter against the man she will marry.

Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) as Tonya’s first boyfriend and then her husband and finally her ex has his own version of the story just as Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser) her bodyguard thinks he masterminded the whole, what has become known as ‘the incident’, thing and, yet, is as dumb as they come!

At the beginning we meet Al Harding (Jason Davis), Tonya’s father, who teaches her how to kill and skin rabbits setting up the first half of the film leading to ‘the incident’. He leaves shortly after and we don’t see him anymore.

The only one who seems ‘normal’, who cares for Tonya, is her skating coach, Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson) who knows the American skating world wants a princess, who dresses right, has the right kind of family, isn’t assertive off the court and is wholesome in every way which certainly doesn’t describe Tonya.

Whether it is the screenwriter, director or Margot Robbie, by the end of the film we see this vilified woman who was really punished more than anyone else involved, as someone who may not deserve what happened to her.

Oddly, among all this violence, all these mostly nasty, some dumb, really dumb people there are a lot of laughs and one doesn’t feel guilty while they are laughing but after the movie is over you wonder if these people, the mother, husband, bodyguard and Tonya are people you should laugh at or sympathize with.

“I, Tonya” has some fine acting, especially Margot Robbie in the title role, and Allison Janney as her mother, but you wonder if this woman, who had few moments of joy and success in her life, deserved to be stripped of everything including the one thing she excelled at and lived for, and if she was guilty as many people thought? 

And, oh, just to have 20 minutes cut from this version.

Movie trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuDQOMICfr0