The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) - Review

 

Given the odd trajectory of her life, someone like Michael Showalter (“Wet Hot American Summer,” “The Big Sick”) would seem like the absolute perfect choice to direct a film about Tammy Faye. Not only is she a bit of an oddball in her overall personality, but the televangelist went from being one of the biggest television personalities ever to being nearly penniless, to eventually being reborn as a beacon of kindness and LGBTQA+ icon.

Not exactly the kind of life you’d expect from someone who got their start doing puppetry in a Midwestern town, and the film does maintain a bit of the stranger than fiction air her life eventually took on. Yet, unfortunately, Showalter doesn’t embrace these qualities as much as one might expect from him, leading to a far more pedestrian film than one might expect from either the source material or the people involved.

Let there be no debate though, Jessica Chastain (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Molly’s Game”) is an absolute knockout, delivering what might be one of the best performances of her career. The entire film basically traces the path of Tammy’s loss of innocence to a kind of rebirth of it. Chastain manages to keep the tricky balance of it all in check; Tammy’s has a certain air of innocence about her, bordering on naveté, but she isn’t stupid, and Chastain nor Showalter or writer Abe Sylvia (“Dead to Me,” “Nurse Jackie”) stoop to making her some kind of idiot savant.

Opposite her is Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network,” “Hacksaw Ridge”) also delivering an exceptional performance as her borderline abusive husband Jim Bakker. He has an air of sinister-ness about him, especially opposite the innocence of Tammy’s good will. He’s the devil to her angel, clearly playing the people watching their shows for all their worth. He’s manipulative and gaslights Tammy at every corner, and Garfield plays it to a T creating a deliciously malevolent counterpart to her sweetness, making it a performance you love to hate.

The rest of the cast do their jobs well enough, but none stand out like Garfield and Chastain. Cherry Jones (“24,” “Transparent”) plays Tammy’s mother with the same level of sweetness as Chastain, but still acknowledging the idiocy of Tammy’s blind faith in Jim. Vincent D’Onofrio (“Full Metal Jacket,” “Men in Black”) plays Jerry Falwell, the closest thing the film has to an antagonist besides Jim. While he’s mostly fine, he lacks the magnetic malevolence that Garfield has, instead going to a more downplayed antagonistic force.

No one else apart from them really stands out, and it speaks to a much larger issue with the film overall. It presents various events, characters, and moments from Tammy’s life, not so much structured like a film but like a memoir. The material doesn’t have a three-act structure, but the film seems to be trying to force it into one.

It’s also remarkably downplayed at times. Yes, there are moments of pomp and circumstance and they not only play marvelously well, but they’re the best parts of the film, showcasing Showalter’s strengths with the ridiculous and putting Chastain and Garfield’s performances on full display. It's almost an achievement then that a large majority of the film is just kind of boring. It moves through so many plot points that they all start to blend together. It's a textbook case of showing us a real person’s life without saying anything about them or the events.

Like a delicious candy bar, the film’s best bits are right at the center. The film’s first act feels like it can’t wait to get started and therefore feels pretty rushed. Meanwhile its third act, post bankruptcy, feels very meandering, like it's just waiting for things to end. When Tammy and Jim are surrounded by the glitz and glamour and money and betrayal of their television empire, that’s clearly where Showalter is most comfortable and it results in the best part of the film being those moments.

“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” is a somewhat boring, by the numbers biopic with moments of glory overshadowed by some rough pacing and tonal work. It's the kind of project that clearly doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it an extravagant truth-is-stranger-than-fiction story or is it a down to earth realistic portrayal of this woman’s life? Neither, resulting in a somewhat dull film with a fantastic middle, that is at least propped up by two stellar lead performances throughout. 3.5/5