The new trailer for the satirical Tonya Harding biopic is as coarse as they come.
Neon has released the full-length red band trailer for the Margot Robbie-starrer, I, Tonya. Tracking the life and career — and downfall — of figure skater, Tonya Harding, Craig Gillespie‘s black comedy packs a serious punch. Banking on crude humor and aggressive tactics, the trailer is a frenetic supercut of Robbie-as-Harding’s best and worst moments. It even features a lot of an impressively indelicate Allison Janney as Harding’s mother. Watch it below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZbTLdDHRvs
In the trailer, Harding commands the narrative with lots of fourth-wall breaking as vignettes of her life play out. This includes slivers of life with an abusive mother as both a child (Mckenna Grace) and adult, as well as Harding meeting her first husband Jeff Gilooly (Sebastian Stan). These scenes set the tone for the skater’s history. But there’s no missing out on her present; that is, the notorious incident that ended Harding’s career: breaking the leg of fellow competitor Nancy Kerrigan. The cops and the media are after her, and they’re out for blood. Yet, throughout it all, Harding is prepared to fight back. “America. They want someone to love. But they want to hate,” she muses, although who are we meant to believe? The trailer does a great job in making Harding as easy to root for as she is to criticize.
Clearly, this is no inspirational biopic. It’s a film about potentially awful people that may or may not do them justice at all. FSR’s Matt Hoffman delivered a rather biting review of this particularly biting movie, opining that while it’s funny, I, Tonya ended up being less nuanced than it could have been. But Max Covill has more positive things to say about I, Tonya in his post about the film’s first teaser, remarking, “I, Tonya is fascinating, over-the-top, hilarious, and depressing all at once and was one of the highlights of the Toronto International Film Festival.”
So, perhaps there’s something for everyone in a film like I, Tonya after all. It is definitely no Remember the Titans or 42. But there’s a real draw in having an unapologetically, ridiculously crass figure skater — which is an undeniably intriguing juxtaposition. The film presents Harding as a woman who can be anyone to anybody and lets her be extremely obnoxious and riotous, which is great. And personally, as a fan of Robbie, Stan, Janney and even Grace, I’m definitely looking forward to this for those performances too, especially after such a fun trailer.
I, Tonya hits cinemas December 8th.
Related Topics: I Tonya, Margot Robbie, Trailers
