Tammy

Melissa McCarthy returns to the screen to star in the road trip comedy “Tammy.” Along with McCarthy, the film stars Susan Sarandon, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, Sandra Oh, Mark Duplass, Gary Cole, Dan Aykroyd and Kathy Bates. McCarthy also co-wrote the film along with her husband, Ben Falcone, who directed it as well.

Even with its talented cast, “Tammy” suffers from McCarthy’s overbearing domination. Its comedic quality consists of either cheap humor that hits the audience like a sledgehammer or jokes that could work, but get exhausted by the amount of time spent on them. It also strains itself in presenting a positive message which completely changes the overall tone of the movie and inserts a forced and unnecessary romantic subplot.

The film starts throwing its attempts at humor from the beginning, when Tammy (McCarthy) hits a deer with her car and gets fired from her fast food job. While there’s great comedic potential to be had from these two instances, they’re promptly wasted by her attempting to give the deer mouth to mouth by blowing at its face, licking hamburger buns and throwing trash at her ex manager.

There’s also jokes concerning Tammy’s personality that fall flat by going on for too long, such as when she’s robbing a different fast food restaurant so she can bail her grandmother, Pearl (Sarandon) out of jail. It’s a ridiculous concept that could have been executed really well, it had been short and concise. But the scene goes on forever with Tammy trying three times to get over the counter, rambling about pie and how she and the clerk could have been friends in different circumstances and struggling to lock them in the freezer. And then a few scenes later, it continues with her trying to give the money back. All these scenes do are establish what the audience realized in the first few scenes: Tammy has a gruff exterior and short temper, but is actually quite kind-hearted.

Pearl is also an alcoholic addicted to OxyContin, which the film also tries to give a humorous spin. But after the third time she gets blackout drunk, it ceases to have any sort of humor.

But with the humor comes a strained positive message. At one point, after Pearl has again gotten herself drunk and insulted Tammy, Pearl’s cousin, Lenore (Bates) gives her a lesson in tough love, telling her to stop complaining and allowing herself to be a victim. And while that’s a great message for audiences to learn, it feels completely out of nowhere. And after this message has been brought to Tammy, the film takes a complete turn in tone. While that shift could be attributed to her fully understanding what Lenore told her while she spent 38 days off screen in prison, it still feels jarring. It’s also lazy writing.

The romantic subplot was also completely unnecessary. Tammy leaves her husband early on in the film after he cheats on her. When she and Pearl arrive in Louisville, she meets Bobby (Duplass). The two continue to run into each other three more times during the course of the movie and each time the two grow closer. Unfortunately, it seems quite forced and done only so Tammy can meet someone new. While the character is a good idea in an effort to help Tammy grow as a character, he doesn’t need to be a potential love interest.

On the other hand, there is one redeeming quality the film has: Don (Aykroyd), Tammy’s father. He picks her up from prison and offers to kill Tammy’s ex-husband. It’s Aykroyd’s delivery, deadpan tone and making a shotgun motion when she goes to pick up her things from her old house that do his portion justice. Unfortunately, he’s in the film for about 10 minutes.

Melissa McCarthy has made decent films in the past, starring alongside Sandra Bullock in “The Heat” and Jason Bateman in “Identity Thief.” The problem here is the effort she took in writing this film with her husband, allowing her to completely dominate the leading role, made possible by the direction of her husband. Melissa McCarthy needs a director to reel her in and co-stars to provide pushback to keep her from going overboard.

#4 for 2014 New Releases