Tammy

                Melissa McCarthy in recent years has gained recognition as one of the funniest female comedians in Hollywood. While she may have started out on “Gilmore Girls,” it wasn’t until her Oscar nominated performance in “Bridesmaids” that she started to get into the spotlight. Since then, she’s worked on “The Heat,” and “Identity Thief,” which were also very funny films, and they show she has great chemistry when it comes to other big name stars. Hell, I still think she was the only funny thing in “The Hangover Part III.” Today, we take a look at her newest film which she produced, wrote, and starred in, “Tammy.”

                In this film, McCarthy plays Tammy; an overweight woman-child who loses her job at a fast-food joint, and finds out her husband is cheating on her. In response to this, she decides to finally get out of town with her grandmother, played by Susan Sarandon, and from there on out, it’s shenanigans throughout the way.

                Was this as good as McCarthy’s other films? Sadly, it isn’t, and it comes from one major, MAJOR problem in the film…the setup for this film is just plain lazy. And what I mean is, the conflict of Tammy finding out that her husband is cheating on her isn’t put as much focus on as it should have; instead, it’s just an excuse for Tammy to just throw a fit and go crying to her mom about it, who just happens to live next door. I know that’s the main setup with the character, that she’s basically a big child, and that’s what a good amount of the jokes set upon, but I felt like it could have worked better if it had a director that was best known for doing characters that way, like Jon Favreau or even Adam McKay, who produced this film with Will Ferrell, the king of playing man-childs. Instead, McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone, has the beginning directed like it was tacked on at the last minute, just to give a reason for the film to REALLY start.

                The film is a supposed buddy road movie, but why was that so hard to market? The film’s trailers started out setting up some sort of fast-food heist film, like Tammy was going to get back at the business for firing her, and she does it on the run…but no, all we get is a film that’s just Melissa McCarthy and Susan Sarandon on the road, making jokes. And don’t get me wrong, the jokes themselves are funny, but you get my point. Oh, and did I mention that Dan Aykroyd’s in this movie? Yeah, he plays Tammy’s father, but he’s really underused in this film, and I was hoping for so much more.

                What was weird for me was that some of the cast members in this film were all from “The Way Way Back,” which was my favorite film of 2013. Nat Faxon plays Tammy’s cheating husband, Toni Collette plays the girl Faxon’s cheating with, and Allison Janney is playing Tammy’s mother; with how they got these people back together in another film, I kept expecting a big joke to come at the end, like Steve Carrell popping up in a cameo or something.

                I’ll give the film credit; the acting is actually pretty good. Nothing special, but it did show that these people did care about being in the film. Hell, I’d even say Susan Sarandon manages to bring out some of the funniest lines in the film, even if her character did seem to get a little too overboard. Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh also appear in the film, playing Sarandon’s lesbian cousin and cousin-in-law, and they manage to do a good enough job. I’ll even admit, I did like the touching moments between Tammy and her love interest, Bobby, played by Mark Duplass; granted, he was just playing the average schmoe, but he did alright.

                Overall, “Tammy” is a film that I can’t necessarily recommend as much as I could. The script needed some polishing, and a director who was a bit more experienced. If you like Melissa McCarthy, I’m sure you’ll like this film fine; but for those looking for a much more consistent comedy, I’d probably say go watch “The Lego Movie,” which you can rent at your local Redbox. It’s not that good, but I wasn’t mad at it…you want to know what DOES make me mad though? It’s the fact that people on IMDB think this film was worse than “Sex Tape”…we’ll be going over THAT one next time.

Rating: 5/10