I, Tonya

Eine biografische Charakterstudie mit hochwertig ausgearbeiteten Figuren, die wegen dem Kontrast des rüpelhaften Charakters der Hauptfigur und der eleganten Eiskunstlauf-Welt, welche für sie alles bedeutet, interessant ist. Die Welt, aus der sie kommt, und die Partie, in welcher sie mitspielt (und die sie sich selbst ausgesucht hat), sorgen für ein spannendes Drama wie aus einem Genre-Film. Obwohl es in ihm nicht ums Leben geht. Ausgezeichnete Schauspieler*innen, fesselnde Sportauftritte. (04.03.2018)

Every year you think there cannot be another Olympic story you don’t know yet and still the creators always dig up something new. However, the figure skater Tonya Harding did not have a life story that one should brag about. On the other hand, it is so unbelievable that it would be a shame if we didn’t learn more about it. The film was lucky as it got creators who filmed it truly authentically. For example, you will not recognize Margot Robbie at all. She turned from a pretty actress into an American small-town bitch who loves figure skating and everything else bothers her. The fact that her husband beats her here and there won’t stop her from being famous one day, right? However, the human stupidity can stop her, and I have to say that I wouldn’t be able to invent a more interesting story of an Olympic athlete. The second half of the movie was truly unbelievable. I was just bating my breath while watching how far a person can go. (21.01.2018)

Quite an interesting story of Tonya Harding, and the only reason I watched the film is because I like sports dramas where the underdog kicks everyone’s asses. The opening met my expectations and I wanted to praise the excellent Tilda Swinton as the mother, but now I realise it was actually Allison Janney, well never mind she was perfect and to remove her after half an hour is a reprehensible mistake. That's like someone removing J.K. Simmons from Whiplash, without him the film definitely wouldn't have gotten the recognition it has now. As for Tonya herself, unfortunately there's not much skating, the rivalry is mostly nonexistent and she performs the same tricks over and over. The film focuses more on her personal life and her relationship with her husband, which at times was reminiscent of The War of the Roses, but I wasn't really interested in that. Pros: Margot Robbie and Allison Janney both solid, an interesting story. Cons: slow pace, humour only in the first 30 minutes then absent, lack of skating and o an intense finale like in Borg vs. McEnroe, for example. 6/10. (23.02.2021)

The true face of America. I, Tonya skates along the borders between drama and comedy, but there is more truth in her story than it seems at first glance. A comedy about simple rednecks slips into a cruel family drama at unexpected moments and works with truth as it suits (parrot on the coat, shooting at the husband). The acting is super in all cases (particularly the mom is priceless), but Margot is plain fantastic and I think she deserves an Oscar. The American Dream inside out. I think that you really should kill yourself. (04.03.2018)

On a purely emotional level, Margot Robbie should have won an Oscar for this wild parade of domestic violence, 90s fashion, crazy bangs, a boorish family background and figure skating, because there's hardly a character in the last year that has had such a broad appeal and reflected society so well, as well as the values of will, hard work, life's victories, losses and realising your dream, no matter how self-typical. She downright steals some scenes, such as the one at the courthouse at the end, overshadowing not only the other actors but also the otherwise excellent technical ensemble. I,Tonya is also on the same level as Titanic or the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one respect, the visual effects serve as a means of supporting the story, not as mere eye-candy. At the same time, they are hardly visible at all and the ice-skating scenes are filmed fantastically, yet unspectacularly, so not everyone notices. It's not a great film, but for the first time in a long time a story of the rise and fall of a person in an antipathetic way with very peculiar, harsh humour. (13.05.2018)

As excellent as the performances are, the true star of the film is Gillespie, the director, who managed put together a boisterous story with motivations that cannot be fully understood and where you don’t really have anyone to root for due to the moral ugliness of all the characters, and he did it in such an energetic and coherent way, comparable to Martin Scorsese at his best. I can’t remember any other film where I enjoyed so much the retrospective structure supplemented by the narration of the participants, all complemented with “Soderbergh-like” breaks in the shape of the remarkable soundtrack, on which the staging of many scenes depends, or the sudden time jumps for the sake of more striking twists. Under this barrage of great ideas and interesting (though awful) characters, it almost doesn’t matter than the runtime could have been shorter and the secondary plots better resolved. A welcome breath of fresh air to the stereotypic Academy shelves, it’s a pity that Margot didn’t get there, too. (27.02.2019)

Ich könnte eine Polemik mit dem Inhalt des Vertreibers führen, dass es sich um eine rabenschwarze Komödie handelt. Aus meiner Sicht handelt es sich gerade mal um ein rabenschwarzes Drama, das mich schwermütig werden lässt, am besten hat es der kommentierende Journalist auf den Punkt gebracht - "alles haben die zwei größten Idioten in einer Geschichte bewirkt, in der alle Idioten sind“. Die Geschichte ist von Anfang an depressiv, wir wissen nicht genau und werden es auch nie erfahren, wie sich alles eigentlich abgespielt hat, wer alles verschuldet hat, trotzdem, wenn Tony Harding ihre Kindheit, ihr Erwachsenwerden und ihre Beziehung zu ihrem Mann wenigstens zur Hälfte so erlebt hat, wie es im Film gezeigt wird, dann braucht man sich nicht zu wundern (allerdings ist das nicht zu entschuldigen), wenn sie in den Angriff auf Nancy Kerrigan aktiv eingebunden war. Nachdem ich den Film gesehen hatte, schaute ich mir ein kurzes Video an, das Journalisten kurz nach dem Angriff gedreht hatten, und es zerriss mir das Herz, der Schmerz, die Ohnmacht und die Verzweiflung, die aus Kerrigan sprechen, sind unerträglich und niederschmetternd. Schauspielerisch hervorragend Margot Robbie, die einen guten Start hatte, weil sie verschiedene schauspielerische Gelegenheiten bekommt. Nun, und wenn man Polemiken über Oscarnominierungen von Schauspielern führt, und das muss man auf jeden Fall, dann kommt im Fall der besten Nebendarstellerin keine Polemik in frage - Allison Janney ist widerlich toll und toll widerlich - auf ihren Sieg bei den Oscars würde ich ruhig viertausend Euro setzen - ich denke aber, der Kurs wird so ungünstig sein, dass sich das nicht lohnt. (24.02.2018)

Yeah, I remember the controversy around Tonya Harding, but it was interesting to see the story background. Based on the title of the film, I was expecting a drama about how some athletes will do anything to participate in the Olympics. The story was weirdly fragmented, though, as if the filmmakers wanted to handle multiple themes at once, not fully focusing on any one of them. Despite some reservations, I was intrigued by the film, Shawn and his boys took care of the laughs, and I particularly enjoyed the mother-daughter relationship portrayed by Allison Janney and Margot Robbie. (01.07.2018)

I didn't think I was going to be that entertained by this film, but given the way it is shot and the performances in particular (Margot Robbie and the incredibly exuberant Allison Janney, not to mention little McKenna, who shines everywhere, even if only for a moment in this film), I had to smile and just enjoy myself the entire time, also because of how interestingly the film is shot. (24.01.2018)

Far more interesting than the figure skating itself here is the portrayal of Tonya's struggle with public opinion and her pathetic effort to improve her visual self-presentation on the ice. Whereas her toxic yet rather ambiguous relationship with both her mother and her own husband is a chapter unto itself. It can't go without notice that Margot Robbie has notably porked up and "gotten ugly" for this role so her performance as an American hillbilly can be properly authentic. When you think of Margot Robbie in any other film, the contrast between her usual beauty and the unattractiveness she has here is almost adorable. Craig Gillespie has an exquisite flair for engagingly portraying key scenes, which is already evident in the opening on the ice, when a fuming mother in the middle of the rink pushes her four-year-old daughter "to teach her a lesson". The fact that the individual characters are portrayed rather contradictorily, and that you’re rooting for the film itself rather than the protagonist, moves the whole narrative into uncharted waters as far as autobiographical adaptations are concerned. [85%] (18.04.2022)

It's hard to see such a wonderfully brisk, energetic and above all entertaining biopic, and the almost Coen-like humor suits this real, yet barely believable story immensely. The same can be said of the soundtrack, which almost perfectly underlines the dynamics of the narrative. The American figure skater Tonya Harding grew up a poor redneck with a psychopathic mother and a father who ran away from them. Her childhood was simply unhappy. Probably for these reasons she didn't look very feminine on the ice, but she was an excellent jumper of her time. I have to admit that Margot Robbie in the title role and Allison Janney as the tough mother really got under my skin, playing their roles so convincingly. (95%) (22.03.2023)