I, Tonya review.

So the Tonya Harding story. Tonya Harding, Nancy Kerrigan. Now this is Tonya Harding's story. Just saw this movie. It's an interesting little film. One of the better descriptions I heard of it, it was like Goodfellas on ice skates. That's fair. It uses the dual narrations, since sometimes the characters talk directly to camera, all that fun Scorsese-esque stuff. At this point, I'm pretty sure everybody knows the basic story of Tonya Harding, a talented figure skater that didn't really fit in to what the figure skating world wanted, and her abusive relationship with her husband and all that stuff. Actually, I didn't know about that, and that really bummed me out to watch all that stuff. It's a not nice thing.

Anyway, what I'd like to ask or talk about with Tonya Harding: well, one, and this is something I always suspected, but I guess I now know for real, not for real, I mean it's a movie, but boy, did Harding get a shit rap and everything. Just no matter what she did, she would always get screwed over. It did make me feel sympathy for a person I've never really felt sympathy for before, and it tried to explain it from their side of things, so I guess I apologize to Tonya Harding for not listening to her side of the story before. I do feel still feel bad for Nancy Kerrigan, 'cause it kind of defined her life too, this whole situation, and in a weird way I noticed that now the story is turning against Kerrigan, and it's like, haven't we learned the lesson yet, that maybe both of them were, you know, people? So, like I said, the tide now is kind of turning against Nancy Kerrigan. I'm just like, man, you can't insult Disney, I guess. You gotta worship the Lord Disney and any little negative thing you say against Disney, well, you're being ungrateful. Whatever.

Margot Robbie stars as Tonya Harding, which is perfect casting. I always feel bad for Margot Robbie a little bit just because her best roles, well, not best roles, let's be honest, but her most famous roles have had her as an insane sexpot. Margot Robbie's an attractive woman, but it's just like, she's kind of defined by that in her two most famous movies. In this one, she gets to play an actual character with sympathy and stuff, which is good. There's a scene where she's describing her pulling off the triple axle and that made me cry just a little bit, when they were talking about it, and it was good. That was an effective scene, where she just goes, "I never really get to talk about this stuff anymore. Nobody asks me about it."

Allison Janney playing her mother was just great. In a weird way, watching it, I was reminded of Throne of Blood's Lady Macbeth, I guess in how in that movie, the Lady Macbeth analog never moves and Allison Janney seems to be in a permanent, very still state of anger all the time, is kind of what her performance reminded me of. Then there was Sebastian Stan as Jeff Gillooly; oh he did a good job. He did really good, 'cause I guess this is just a compliment to Peter Sarsgaard, but I thought that was Peter Sarsgaard playing the role. I guess it proves if you put that really shitty mustache on anybody, it immediately degrades them. Because Sebastian Stan is a sexy dude. It's like, "Holy shit, I didn't even recognize him." They didn't change him that much.

What else? You know what it does well? It successfully avoids the biopic problem. It does and it doesn't, because it's fundamentally a drama, mostly about Tonya and Jeff's relationship in a lot of ways, and her relationship with her mother, and you do see her perform, but that's not really the main focus of it. It's almost like it's a movie and not just a filmed clip show of the famous events in somebody's life, which is great. But what about the attack itself, the filming, what about the attack itself?

Well, I want to talk about the guy who played Shawn Eckardt a little bit, because he was by far my favorite character. Not to detract from how legitimately great Margot Robbie's performance is, but this dude, Paul Walter Hauser playing Shawn Eckardt, I saw the character there, because I know people like that. I can see the reverberations of that. He is a guy who lives at home his entire life and is constantly talking about how he's a tactical battle expert. Man, any scene with that dude made me really laugh.

So I guess, spoilers, this is based on a real story so whatever. I really loved the ending scene where she becomes a boxer. Margot Robbie does a great job on this, and I bet she's gonna get an Oscar for this, and I really love her right at the end where she goes, "You know, that's what it is, fame is fame, I guess." Anything else? So that's I, Tonya. It can show you how insane the life of figure skating can really be. I give it a recommend.