Tammy: Too Tired To Be Entertaining

Melissa McCarthy is Hollywood's new comedic golden child. She's slowly taking over the Galifianakis spotlight (as he did with Ferrell) and has had some notable success. Bridesmaids, albeit highly overrated, featured a hilarious McCarthy in full form. Sadly, her and husband/co-writer/director Ben Falcone misfire with Tammy due to flat jokes, unlikeable characters and a story that drags and goes nowhere, even when it tries to go somewhere. 

We open with Tammy, a bum of a worker, "mistreated" housewife getting fired from her fast-food job and deciding she needs to get out of town immediately to escape her cheating husband and overall crap life. Wait, but she needs money. And a car. No worries, grandma Pearl (Susan Sarandon) has that covered. So, the two hit the open road and begin their booze filled, donut turning adventure. As they get further into their journey of bar hopping, robbery and lesbian lake parties, Tammy and Pearl find out more about themselves – and what we see is quite ugly. In the end, Tammy turns over a new leaf. Pearl sobers up. And all is good in the world again. But not really. 

Tammy falls short of what is needed due to three things: 

1. Really Unlikeable Characters: Neither Tammy nor Pearl are likeable. From start to finish they are misanthropic, bumbling fools who continue to be misanthropic, bumbling fools. They both have bad morals and seem to always be talking, but never saying anything. The entire ride they simply talk at one another, not with one another. 

2. Severely Deflated Direction of Story: Road movies are hard to script, pacing especially. Tammy attempts to set up pacing checkpoints, but fails with poor story direction and sporadic story catalysts. As a result, we are left with a humdrum tale of people we don't like babbling about how much life sucks. 

3. Unacknowledged Realism: This final point is a mixture of the two above points. Neither McCarthy or Falcone seem to recognize the realism of their characters' offensive perspectives. Both Tammy and Pearl make mistake after mistake and have oblivious attitudes to not only themselves, but fixing themselves. Pearl is supposed to act as our Virgil along the journey, and instead we get a pill popping drunk who never gets her act together, thus our annoyance is multiplied by two. 

Tammy does have some witty one-liners, and it did make me laugh a few times. But, not even Macklemore, McCarthy or warm apple pie can save this deflated, tired attempt at comedy.