I, Tonya - Movie Review

Having seen almost everything playing at the theater right now, I checked down to see a movie I wasn't planning to otherwise see. I am a lot more willing to check down since receiving my moviepass last year. With moviepass, I can watch one movie at the theater every day. My only investment is my time, which I manage in a way to set aside time for the theater. Having watched the Tonya Harding story unfold on national television, I really didn't think I, Tonya would have much to offer. But it wasn't a wasted two hours.

With the Winter Olympics set to open in less than a week, I guess a post on one of the greatest Olympic scandals to hit US Figure Skating in history is timely. America had an Olympic sweetheart in Kristi Yamaguchi. In her shadow were two inconsistent skaters whose drama eventually overshadowed Yamaguchi. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) were fierce rivals, both having brilliant performances only to experience poor performances. But this film only briefly touches on Kerrigan and the incident, focusing more on the broader story in the form of simulated interviews.

Tonya Harding is painted as a mildly sympathetic creature in this film. The entire world, particularly the skating world, viewed Harding as the trailer trash of skating. Without sticking a perfect triple axel, Harding may never have made the Olympic team. Being the first US women's skater to do it helped offset the apparent bias that judges had towards her. The trailer trash angle surfaces quickly in interviews that paint Harding's family dysfunction going back to childhood. We meet Harding as a three-year-old girl with an angelic face. She skates to Devil Woman on the movie soundtrack, setting up subtle messaging in the movie soundtrack throughout. I'm not sure if the dichotomy was aimed at the child Tonya or her mother, Lavona (Allison Janney) who is smoking a cigarette at mid-rink while pressuring a skating coach to train her daughter.

The coach (Julianne Nicholson) reluctantly takes Tonya on as a student. Tonya quickly rises, beating out her older competitors with first place wins at the age of four. But her home life doesn't seem to improve. In fact, it gets worse. Tonya's escape from skating was the time spent with her father, even if that meant shooting rabbits with a .22. Her father soon left her abusive mother, leaving Tonya as her sole punching bag. Tonya's training seems to take. On the ice and off. She ends up dating Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) who also had a propensity toward domestic violence. Gillooly has a strange friend, Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser) who considers himself an operator. In fact, he is a loser who lives with his mom. Gillooly and Eckhardt dream up a scheme to scare Nancy Kerrigan in hopes of disrupting her concentration leading up to the 1994 Olympics. Somewhere along the line, the plot morphs from sending letters to kneecapping the talented competitor. I, Tonya recounts this history, filling in the backstory, the incident and the aftermath.

I, Tonya was an interesting trip down memory lane. The first thing I noticed was the soundtrack, which was excellent. The thing that stood out to me is that the soundtrack was thematic rather than being tied to the era. The tunes tended to be more tone-setters than accurate representations of what might be playing on the radio at any given point in the story line. That was alright with me, because the selections were excellent. The look of the film seemed more accurately tied to the era. The costumes, cars and hairstyles all seemed researched. I didn't notice any anachronisms. Although, on an 11 million dollar budget, something may have slipped in that I missed. But overall, the film had quality at the price point. With one glaring exception...

If this photo looks a bit off, it is because of the CGI. Robbie's face was superimposed on a stunt skater's body. It was horribly distracting. Almost...eerie. The CGI was horrible. The best comparison I can make is the recent film Battle of the Sexes. In the latter, real tennis players are used for many of the matches, with Emma Stone and Steve Carrell superimposed later. It worked. It looked seamless. I, Tonya wasn't even close. Robbie's face looked weird on the skater's body. It wasn't a good fit. There were some fast paced skating scenes, but the use of CGI in this case failed horribly.

I found that, in spite of the CGI, I enjoyed this film. Between the catchy tunes, the witty dialogue and Margot Robbie's performance, this film had some redeeming qualities. The screenplay, by Steven Rogers, took an interesting approach to the subject matter. Using real interviews, dialogue was constructed around true events and live interviews, recreated to piece together a story that attempted to find balance between the different perspectives given from each participant in the story. A nice dose of humor was thrown in to spice things up. The film lagged at times and felt a bit long, but I did laugh at times. For me, Robbie was the highlight of this film. She truly captured the angst, frustration and stress of being the most hated skater in the world ready to perform on the world stage. She added a bit of empathy to the character that might just change some perspectives on the much maligned skater she portrayed.

The most amazing part of this story is that it really happened. Viewers might question a character like Shawn Eckhardt, who I might personally call "over-the-top" in a work of fiction. But the real Eckhardt actually said in a real-life interview that he was an international counter-terrorism expert. This was fertile ground for an entertaining trip down memory lane. The use of wit in a trainwreck of a story allowed for some interesting dialogue. The pacing was off at times and the story less-than-compelling beyond what we already knew. But it was a worthwhile film. Robbie was exceptional. Had the CGI been even moderately better, I might have given a better rating. But there is no excuse for CGI this bad. 7/10.