{"id":106,"date":"2017-12-22T18:40:30","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T18:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/dev\/?p=106"},"modified":"2018-09-16T22:38:09","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T22:38:09","slug":"i-tonya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/i-tonya\/","title":{"rendered":"I, Tonya"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is a dark comedy told from the point of view of each of the characters involved in Olympic Figure Skater Tonya Harding\u2019s life. And are they characters! Flawed in so many ways. But what makes this film interesting is that Director Craig Gillespie actually turns the camera, breaking the fourth wall and has the characters talk directly into the camera and to you, scripted by writer Steven Rogers (StepMom,<\/span> Hope Floats).<\/span> They describe Tonya, relationships and situations from their own perspective which is usually a different story.\u00a0\u00a0It was inspired by an interview he saw with Tonya and her husband Jeff where they didn\u2019t agree on anything. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hearing their stories is an effective tool and provides some very funny extrapolation of the attitudes and events in 1994. These and the other quirky characters actually deserve your nervous laughter for the silly, outrageous, and sometimes violent things they do.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”115″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”114″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”113″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]\n

Tonya Harding\u2019s name became tarnished forever during those Olympic trials. That\u2019s when her rival got whacked in the knee with a metal baton, painfully eliminating her from the competition. Harding was named the perpetrator, even though she knew nothing about it. It was her husband\u2019s buddy who hired the guy to render figure skating darling, Nancy Kerrigan, disabled so Tonya could have a chance at Olympic Gold at Lillihammer, Norway. Her ace in the hole was being the only one who could successfully land a tremendously difficult triple axel. She wasn\u2019t as graceful nor as pretty as Kerrigan, but she was an accomplished athlete. She was rough, tough and edgy, and this film shows you why.<\/p>\n

Margot Robbie not only stars in this film but is a producer. She met with Tonya Harding whose advice was simply, \u201cDo sit ups.\u201d And when Harding saw the scene where Tonya flips the bird at the judges, which she did, Robbie also punctuates, saying \u201cSuck my dick\u201d in the film. Harding laughed and said, I wish I\u2019d said that at the time. Robbie is not trying to imitate Harding in the film. First of all, she\u2019s much prettier, and she had to alter her personality for the scenes where she\u2019s seen through Jeff\u2019s perspective. The actress says she created her own interpretation of the skater and was consistent throughout.<\/p>\n

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Robbie was not a skater, terrified of getting hurt and worked out 6 months training on skates. It was worth it. And editor, Tatiana S. Riegel put Nicolas Karakatsanis\u2019 cinematography along with archive footage of the real Tonya skating her routines together well. You\u2019ll be able to feel the tension of being on the ice with her and under extreme pressure. Robbie goes from being 15 to 45 in the film. Her early years with braces on her teeth are not quite as convincing, but she gets the point across showing how she was constantly slapped and beat down verbally by her Mom.<\/p>\n

Allison Janney\u2019s LaVona is amazing. Janney created the character herself after trying, unsuccessfully, to find Tonya\u2019s Mom. LaVona is over-the-top mean, sarcastic and funny, smoking like a chimney with a pet bird on her shoulder nipping at her face. And all that is happening as she\u2019s talking directly into the camera at you. She was a mother all right, but not the nice kind. Tonya didn\u2019t have a chance and it is amazing she got as far as she did surrounded by such negativity.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more. Tonya hooks up with and marries Jeff Gillooly, played by Sebastian Stan (Logan Lucky, Captain America: Civil War, The Martian<\/span>). She probably got married to try to get away from Mama. Because of her childhood, Tonya is always looking for love and validation. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tonya and Jeff love each other and show it with some pretty hot scenes. But there\u2019s a lot of fighting, too. She\u2019s tough and he\u2019s a loser who has no problem dishing out domestic violence.<\/p>\n

Jeff\u2019s got a close friend who is super weird. Shawn Eckhardt, played by Paul Walter Hauser is put in charge of security for Tonya as she gets gains fame. Shawn is a super paranoid nut case . He\u2019s the frightening master mind who dreams up the plot to make it easier for Tonya to win. Frightening.<\/p>\n

Because of what her husband and his hair-brained looney buddy did to\u00a0\u00a0Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya was banned from\u00a0\u00a0figure skating for life and went to court. She had to pay damages and do community service, too. From then on she was considered tabloid material, white trash, all things negative. Much of it she blames on harsh coverage by the media. Tonya didn\u2019t need the media to beat her down. She was constantly getting that kind of treatment from those close to her. Even LaVona pulled a stunt to get paid for material on her own daughter.<\/p>\n

Robbie\u2019s characterization isn\u2019t far off from her role in Suicide Squad<\/span> which is cooking up a sequel starring Jared Ledo as the Joker. That role has garnered her many fans even though she describes herself as a \u201cbeautiful mess\u201d and likes playing those roles. Even though she\u2019s drop dead gorgeous, she\u2019s plays that down to play pathetic underdogs, but you have sympathy for. <\/span><\/p>\n

Robbie and Gillespie changed the ending of the film. It\u2019s not a happy one. Not able to skate any more, the filmmakers wanted to show how she did what she had to and continued to be tough and defiant. It shows her becoming a boxer to make money. In reality, Tonya is now happily married to someone else and has a son she adores.<\/p>\n

The film is timed to come out during the ramp-up for the 2018 Winter Olympics and will bring back memories for those who followed it at that time. In any case, it\u2019s been called a fun mockumentary with flawed, off the wall characters who each tell their own side of the story. Robbie is too pretty to be Tonya but still pulls it off.\u00a0\u00a0Allison Janney is exceptional and memorable as a witch of a Mom.\u00a0\u00a0Both soar, score and nail the landing on film instead of ice.<\/p>\n

30 West\/Neon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0119 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0R[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OXZQ5DfSAAc” el_width=”70″ align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] This is a dark comedy told from the point of view of each of the characters involved in Olympic Figure Skater Tonya Harding\u2019s life. And are they characters! Flawed in so many ways. But what makes this film interesting is that Director Craig Gillespie actually turns the camera, breaking the fourth wall and has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inter-review","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}