I, Tonya

Admit it—when Nancy Kerrigan got kneecapped by folks connected to Tonya Harding all those years ago, you just knew there would be a big Hollywood movie about it someday. Here it is, starring Margot Robbie as the Ice Queen, and it’s funny, funny, nasty stuff. Allison Janney is a sinister hoot as Tonya’s nasty mom, while Robbie proves, oddly enough, that she was born to play Tonya Harding. The movie is picking up some controversy, accusing director Craig Gillespie and writer Steven Rogers of turning Harding into some kind of hero, an innocent in the scheme to take out Kerrigan and pave the way for Harding to become the world’s skating champion. Nah … Harding isn’t portrayed in a positive light here. It’s just that her mom is the greater villain, a manipulative, back-stabbing monster that Janney brings to hilarious fruition. Brow-beating Tonya from her first moments on ice through to her Olympic dreams, she’s a brash cinematic representation of bad parenting. Robbie embodies Harding’s whiny, headstrong persona that’s faithful to the glimpses we’ve gotten of her through the years, especially when she challenges some judges giving her bad scores. Gillespie and his crew also do a good job of making it look like Robbie is doing all of the skating. (She isn’t; it’s a combo of Robbie, stunt women, and CGI.) The whole Tonya Harding episode of sports history was surreal and strange and, thankfully, so is this movie.