Tammy

Well, that didn’t last very long, did it? For all the excitement we got from witnessing the untapped comedic potential she provided in her supporting role in Bridesmaids, everything Melissa McCarthy has touched since then has been, shall we say, less than stellar; Identity Thief, The Heat, Mike & Molly, that cameo in The Hangover Part III… all commercial hits, but you’d have a tough time finding anyone who actually enjoyed any of them. And now with Tammy, we may have reached McCarthy’s nadir – her own personal All About Steve laugh-free comedy – and she’s got nobody to blame but herself; she co-wrote the script with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directed the movie. Yikes.

McCarthy plays the titular Tammy, who in rapid succession gets her car totalled by a passing deer, fired from her job, finds her husband having an affair with a neighbour (an inexplicably underused Toni Collette), and sets off on a road-trip with her disgruntled grandmother (Susan Sarandon) much to the chagrin of her mother (Allison Janney).

That’s all within the first fifteen minutes, and everything after that is just McCarthy and Sarandon getting into strained comedic situations, like getting their car stuck in a forest, or crashing a jet-ski, or having a 4th of July party in a lesbian’s house. There isn’t a single iota of reasoning behind any of it, almost as if McCarthy and Falcone sat down when writing the script and said to themselves “You know what’d be funny? If Tammy got their car stuck in a forest, and then crashed a jet-ski, and then went to a lesbian house party” and just wrote the words “ad-lib” in between those scenes.

If there are any laughs to be had, it’s purely down to McCarthy’s unique ability at dragging out ridiculous conversations until you can’t help but find them funny. She actually is quite a fantastic actress, and during the movie’s darker moments – and it does get quite distressingly dark for a comedy – there is proof that under the right direction, McCarthy could be amazing.

Until then though, we’re just stuck with her being weird and physically hurting herself a lot, which just leaves us feeling awkward, uncomfortable and in need of a good laugh.