5/22/18 - Tully (2018) - 5+/6-/10

Standard Diablo Cody script wit and savvy while Theron nails her disenchanted and run ragged motherly persona. Her nightmare living, with screaming children and unending drain, was extremely effective for me. A film like this identifies and affirms my life choices to not be a parent. While it kept the pace consistent and lightly drew me into its millennial upper-middle class whimsy, there were some hard turns that I found jarring and ultimately damaging.

I had a big problem with the ultimate message and aim of this film, beyond the shift it makes. I question it’s portrayal of mental illness and wonder what an audience that more closely identifies with its protagonist’s machinations would feel about it. I am of two minds about the larger swerve, seeing something coming with the constant mermaid imagery and appreciating an out-of-the-box approach to the crescendo, but still dissatisfied on the whole with where it feels it needs to go. The film seems more interested in snatching the rug out from under the audience than fulfilling promises made by those characters to the audience.

*As an aside: Sometimes another piece of art will worm its way into your brain as you are watching a film that emblomizes or encapsulates what your eyes are intaking. I had that with Tully. Damien Jurado’s Cloudy Shoes was forever on the tip of my mental tongue. The gist of that song applies heavily and the “fluffily light but somewhat still dour” demeanor also fits.