The star is over the top, sure, but she’s got support.
As the disheveled title character of Tammy, we quickly meet Melissa McCarthy at her slapstick, madcap, steal-the-show craziest.
She’s tooling a country road in a beat-up Toyota, grooving to a power ballad coming from a boom box as old as the song when she meets a deer.
She takes to her knees in horror at what she has wrought. She ponders mouth to mouth to bring the deer back.
Not even the prone animal can hijack the scene from McCarthy when it suddenly springs to life and canters off into the field, much to her relief.
The day gets worse and McCarthy’s tizzy escalates. Her boss at work, played by real life husband Ben Falcone (think her Air Marshal fantasy in Bridesmaids) fires her. She returns home to find her church mouse husband, played by Nat Faxon, doing too much at dinner with a neighbor lady played by Toni Collette. So she gathers clothes and walks two doors down to mom’s house. Mom, played by Allison Janney, has had enough of her pouting, but grandma, played by Susan Sarandon, overhears the fight and offers her car and a wad of cash if granddaughter takes her off on the great escape.
Co-written by McCarthy and hubby Falcone and directed by Falcone, there’s no doubt that McCarthy’s meant to be the driver of this metaphorical bus as the summer comedy caper continues as a crazy lady hauling crazier granny toward Niagara Falls, as dysfunctional family vacation, as Thelma and Puh-leeze don’t let poor Tammy get any more over the top.
See the trailer here:
