00:00 (upbeat music)
00:01 - I was the best figure skater in the world
00:03 at one point in time.
00:04 (upbeat music)
00:08 - Call that a clean skate?
00:09 Stop talking to her.
00:10 That girl is your enemy.
00:11 - So, "I, Tonya" then from 2017.
00:13 For those of you who don't know at home,
00:14 it is the story of the American ice skater,
00:16 figure skater Tonya Harding.
00:18 It's a little bit about the story of her life,
00:19 but it pays particular attention to an incident
00:23 where one of her rivals, Nancy Kerrigan,
00:25 was violently injured,
00:26 and it made her pretty infamous at the time.
00:29 So I picked this film because I think it might be
00:31 a tiny, tiny little bit underrated as an entity,
00:34 but I really do think that Margot Robbie's performance
00:37 in particular has gone underrated,
00:40 and she didn't sweep up as I would have expected her to
00:42 when it came to awards season.
00:44 So just to give you an idea of the scores,
00:47 over on IMDb at the time of recording, it gets a 7.5,
00:50 and then on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience give it 88%,
00:54 and then the critics give it 90%.
00:56 So pretty good scores,
00:58 but when they even out, they come to around the mid 80s,
01:01 and I think this is probably a high eight film.
01:04 There is a lot that I really like about this film.
01:06 I love the way that it's constructed.
01:08 I think some of the cinematic
01:10 and storytelling techniques are fantastic.
01:12 I think the script is really good and powerful,
01:14 but the main thing, the standout thing in this film for me
01:17 is the performances, and especially Margot Robbie.
01:20 She is absolutely incredible.
01:21 I've never seen her like this in anything else.
01:23 You're so used to her being this beautiful,
01:26 together, absolutely desirable human being
01:28 in most films that she's in,
01:30 and in this, she just isn't that at all.
01:32 She's so real.
01:33 She's incredibly dramatic, yet moving
01:35 and funny at times as well,
01:37 and the versatility and the range that she shows
01:39 in this film is absolutely outstanding,
01:41 and the cast around her are incredible as well.
01:43 You've got Sebastian Stan, who plays her husband.
01:45 He is an absolutely vile human being,
01:47 and he brings this to life really well,
01:49 and the same goes to the character of her mother,
01:51 played by Alison Janney.
01:52 Again, excellent performances,
01:54 helped by a fantastic script.
01:56 The film does a lot with unreliable narrators
01:58 and narration in general, so there are parts of it
02:00 where you're seeing Tonya's mother
02:03 through Tonya's own eyes.
02:04 You're seeing Tonya through her mother's eyes,
02:07 and there's a lot on the shoulders of that character
02:09 on Alison Janney's performance,
02:11 because she has to both be liked and hated,
02:14 and she just gets the balance absolutely spot on.
02:18 What didn't you like about it, if there is anything?
02:20 - So the main thing for me is that every now and then,
02:22 Tonya would break the fourth wall
02:23 and look directly at the camera
02:24 to give her thoughts on what was happening
02:26 in a particular scene or at a particular moment,
02:28 and I found this a little bit jarring.
02:30 It would usually happen during really heightened scenes
02:33 where there's a lot of emotion and they're very intense,
02:35 so it would just throw me out the film a little bit
02:37 every time it happened, and I feel like, for me personally,
02:39 the film would have been a lot stronger without it.
02:42 - For me, based on what you've said,
02:43 I think it's probably underseen,
02:46 and it's probably about right in terms of its rating.
02:49 What would you say?
02:50 - For me, it is a little bit underrated.
02:52 That 7.5 on IMDb just drags it down
02:55 a little bit too much for me,
02:56 and I do think this is deserving of a much higher score.
02:59 So yeah, I still think that "I, Tonya" is underrated.
03:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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