I, Tonya Review: Tonya Harding Biopic Is the Movie We Need Right Now

This might be the perfect time for a Tonya Harding biopic or rather, a Harding biopic, one set some 23 years after the publics memory of the tabloid diva having drilled down to white-trash figure skater who had something to do with smashing the knee of her rival Nancy Kerrigan during training for the 1994 Winter Olympics. I, Tonya a raunchy, demented, dark-comic dazzler, snappily directed by Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) from an anything-goes script by Steven Rogers, gives Tonya (Margot Robbie in her best performance yet) a chance to prove her almost-innocence.

The film uses recreated interviews with those closest to the disgraced Olympian felons and family members alike who get a chance to speak up. The talking-heads lineup includes: her violent ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan); his idiot cohort, Shawn Eckhardt (Paul Walter Hauser); her purportedly sane skating coach, Diane Rawlinson (Julianne Nicholson); and her demon mother from the hottest spot in Hades, LaVona Golden, played by a dead-solid-perfect Allison Janney as a cross between Marge Simpson and Attila the Hun. Whos telling the truth? According to Harding, Theres no such thing as truth I mean, its all bullshit.

Maybe so. But watching these National Enquirer fugitives mix it up in a rush of sleazoid slapstick will leave your head spinning. Robbie turns her features hard and her attitude harder to play the queen of the triple axel. She never begs for sympathy, though we give it willingly thanks to the pow of the stars take on Harding as a woman who refuses to be a punchline. And Janney is her match, a mother whose tenderest advice to her daughter about marrying Gillooly is, You fuck dumb, you dont marry dumb.

You wont find that on a Hallmark card, and you wont find sentiment to dull the edge off the abuse and exploitation that marked the skaters formative years. The movie cuts deeper, holding a mirror up to the class-conscious America most of us tend to ignore or dismiss and makes us see ourselves reflected in it, too. I, Tonya is funny as hell, but the pain is just as real. Youll laugh till it hurts.