The basic thrust of my initial 9.12.17 review of I, Tonya (“An Ugly Stick Movie That Will Leave Welts”) was that director Craig Gillespie‘s decision to paint the Tonya Harding story with a dark satirical brush was…well, not pleasing. I found it vulgar, abusive and unfunny, mainly because the story itself is inescapably gross and oppressive. It seems as if N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis feels roughly the same way. “As I, Tonya skips here and there and thickens the plot, it becomes increasingly baffling why the filmmakers decided to put a comic spin on this pathetic, dispiriting story,” she writes. “No matter how hard the movie tries to coax out laughs, there’s little about Ms. Harding, her circumstances or her choices that skews as funny.”
