Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy’s “Tammy” is yet another comedy vehicle this year tailored as a vanity film for a specific comic presence that fails on every conceivable level. The movie most of all fails Melissa McCarthy who is much better than this pile of unfunny junk. “Tammy” is specifically tailored for her, and yet she and husband Falcone can never decide what tone they want to run with, they never land even the slightest one-liner, and every effort to make titular Tammy likable is wasted. I’m not even sure what is wrong with Tammy and why she’s comedic. Is she mentally disabled? Is she just naive? Is she the product of coddling and spoiling who just never matured? Is she just a perpetual loser? Are we supposed to laugh at her? Why is watching a human being in constant misery supposed to be funny?
“Tammy” is a road trip movie, a coming of age movie, slapstick comedy, and McCarthy’s somewhat misguided attempt at a “Five Easy Pieces” wandering soul parable. It’s a confusing mish mash of under developed themes and neither story direction ever amounts to an entertaining movie. “Tammy” is just the chronicle of a loser woman who is constantly being shat out of life thanks to her inability to process even the simplest thought. She doesn’t know who Mark Twain is, and writers Falcone and McCarthy have no idea how to handle the joke. Is she just under educated, or is she suffering from a genuine mental illness? McCarthy can also never really decide on how to depict Tammy, turning her in to a tragic working class heroine, a moronic comedy prop, and walking punching bag over and over. How are we supposed to empathize with Tammy crying over the possibility of her grandmother dying from diabetes, when only twenty minutes earlier she was flailing around on a jet ski?
And are we supposed to make note of Tammy’s weight? No one ever really does, and yet while robbing a fast food restaurant, she makes a point of demanding pies because she apparently loves pies. Even a romantic conversation with the son of her grandmother’s boyfriend results in talk about how she loves cheetos. For all intents and purposes, “Tammy” has a fine supporting cast with Kathy Bates, Sandra Oh, and Susan Sarandon on board, all of whom get to do almost nothing with McCarthy being given the focus of the comedy. Or what is supposed to pass as comedy, at least. “Tammy” is a tonal and narrative mess with absolutely no idea of what message it’s trying to convey to the audience. It tries for slapstick comedy and emotional drama, and fails to tack them on to one another. McCarthy has so much more talent than what this unwatchable nonsense displays.
The Blu-Ray for “Tammy” features both the 101 minute extended cut of the film and the 97 minute theatrical cut, while the DVD only has the theatrical cut. The features for the Blu-Ray/DVD combo include the five minute “Tammy’s Road Trip Checklist” in which McCarthy and husband Falcone share road trip stories. There’s five minutes of deleted scenes, six minutes of alternate takes, and the obligatory gag reel.