One star. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor
By Derrick Bang
Melissa McCarthy’s vulgar fat
slob shtick is wearing very thin.
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| Believing that she needs some quick cash in order to help with her grandmother's impending medical bills, Tammy (Melissa McCarthy, right) dons a minimal "disguise" and holds up a fast-food joint ... with a "weapon" that's no more than her pointing fingers in a papr bag. Yep, that's the level of humor in this bomb. |
Tammy isn’t even a rough approximation of a film;
it’s merely a series of disconnected scenes and encounters, clumsily stitched
together in a limp effort at storytelling. McCarthy charges through the
resulting mess like a bull in a china shop, as if daring us not to find her
so-called antics funny.
I’ll take that dare, Melissa.
You’re not funny.
Neither is your film.
Well, wait ... in fairness, I did
laugh once, at a quick shot involving a raccoon and a doughnut. McCarthy had
nothing to do with it.
I find it completely bewildering
that an actress of McCarthy’s talent and timing, having established her comic
chops with TV’s Mike & Molly
(winning an Emmy) and the big screen’s Bridesmaids
(Oscar nomination), would debase herself with material this puerile, sloppy and
slapdash. I’m inclined to believe that even the Three Stooges would have
rejected this script as beneath them.
Hollywood actresses have long
struggled to achieve a level of equality, credibility and respect akin to their
male co-stars ... and this is the path to success? Is demonstrating an ability
to out-gross Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and Farrelly brothers comedies really a sign of progress?
If so, that’s pretty sad.
McCarthy has nobody to blame but
herself, since she shares scripting credit — if such a term even applies — with
off-camera husband Ben Falcone, who also makes his directorial debut with this
train wreck.
Note to Ben: Don’t lose your day
job.
Falcone makes every rookie
mistake in the book, starting with his tendency to frame his wife in tight
close-ups, so that we can count every sweaty pore. And he clearly didn’t
“direct” McCarthy in any sense of the word; he simply points the camera and
waits while she stumbles and bumbles through whatever she concocts from thin
air. Which ain’t much.
