"I, Tonya"

This is a surprisingly good movie!  Yes, we all remember, if we are of a certain age, the scandal of the Tonya Harding vs Nancy Kerrigan "incident" and its outcome.  Talk about giving the Olympics a black eye!  Breaking a competitor's kneecap wasn't the wholesome facade the Olympic committee wanted. Someone needed to be punished for this outrage!  And that person was Tonya Harding.

She was a feisty person from a very early age but she had to be in order to survive.  What a crappy Mother she had, a terrible home life and her first boyfriend was an idiot who told her she was pretty and then beat her. Tonya had to be gutsy to get through it all and skating was her entire life.  The first person to perform two triple axles in a single competition, she was an incredible skater.  The movie has a few "created for the screen" scenes but for the most part, according to Tonya herself, it is fairly accurate.  You come out shaking your head at the raw deal she received compared to the punishment the idiots who actually committed the crime received.  There are moments in the movie that you have to laugh at the incredibly stupidity of the guys that hatched the plot and carried it out. Then  you feel bad for laughing because in the end it just isn't that funny of a situation. But the director plays it for black comedy at times, so one can justify laughing at someone else's misfortune, at least in a couple of scenes.

Great performances, especially Margot Robbie and huge kudos to Allison Janney for her spot-on acting as the wicked mother. It's worth watching this movie just to see her as a driven, cruel, manipulative parent. This is a good movie, check it out.

Which leads me to this:  I also watched in the theater "Battle of the Sexes," the story of Billy Jean King vs Bobby Riggs major tennis match.  That was also a very good movie but it did poorly at the box office.  I have a feeling "I, Tonya" will suffer the same fate.  For some reason, few viewers want to see a true story of something that isn't a huge spectacle.  Their loss, in both of these movies.

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