'Tonya' Delicately Balances Hybrid Genre

I, Tonya
dir. Craig Gillespie 

   Growing up as a youngling in the 1990s, you couldn't go very far without hearing something about either OJ Simpson or Tonya Harding. You'd hear a joke on a sketch show or another development on their constant rotations on the nightly news. When I first heard that a film based on her life, skating career, and "the incident" was announced, I only assumed that it would either be a Lifetime-like over the top campfest or a by-the-numbers biopic with the ups and downs and skimming everything in-between. We get neither though and instead get dark comedy/mockumentary/sports/crime caper genre hybrid that pulls no punches and doesn't sugarcoat anything or anyone.
     Margot Robbie gives a commanding (and awards worthy) performance as Tonya Harding. She portrays her with a balance which keeps the story from diving her character into a parody or martyr figure. The rest of the cast do so as well with Sebastian Stan and Allison Janney giving humanistic balance to the portrayals of Jeff Gillooly and Tonya's Mother respectively. One of the great and maybe maddening qualities of the film is it's constant tonal shifting as the film makes you laugh and giggle one moment, shocked and appalled the next, and then being sympathetic, and then randomizing between all those feelings like a pulsing Simon game machine.
   Underneath all of the insane and inane antics that make the film feel like The Coen Brothers' Fargo, there is an underlying theme of fleeting fame and acceptance and what societal standards of fame and behavior due to its subject matter. It makes you look at the darker side of news media and what they do or don't cover at times especially when news and gossip is available on a twenty-four seven basis. That may be reading a bit too deep into it but how else do you cinematically tell a crazy pop art true life story like this without morphing it into a nostalgic caricature. Luckily for the audience, this film doesn't do that in the slightest.

I, Tonya is Rated R for Pervasive Language, Violence,
and Some Sexual Content/Nudity