Tully - Review

Tully

The accomplished Academy Award Winning Actress Charlize Theron who in 2004 put on a large amount of weight to play the physically challenging role of the real life Aileen Wuornos of Florida, the only woman put to death in the US as a serial killer (“Monster). Now fast forward 14 years later and we find her taking on another weight challenging role by adding on 50+ pounds in the quirky dramatic film named “Tully”.

In “Tully” Theron plays a woman named Marlo. She is a New York suburbanite who's about to give birth to her third child. Her husband Ron is loving, hardworking and very supportive to her and his family, but as men go can sometimes be occasionally clueless about the emotional, psychological, physical and social demands motherhood puts on his wife.

One evening while visiting Marlo's wealthy brother named Craig, Marlo’s husband Ron begins discussing how this pregnancy is putting more stress on his sister this third time around. Craig immediately offers to Ron and Marlo to hire and pay for a nighttime nanny named Tully to help his sister handle the workload. Hesitant at first, Marlo and Ron soon after the baby is born do take up the generous offer with Marlo quickly learning to appreciate all that Tully does for her that results in them forming a special bond as a lifesaving new friendship.

REVIEW: Directed by Jason Reitman and Written by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody who collaborated on the highly acclaimed “Juno”, a film that also examined the ups and downs of a woman dealing with her pregnancy, works equally hard here to be as cutting edge, funny and introspective in their “Tully” as their predecessor “Juno”. And while Theron is her typically compelling self as the mother Marlo capturing just the right balance of loving her family while longing for the old days of her youth when she wasn’t over wright, wasn’t always tired and wasn’t so “unsexy”, the film’s story in the end left me more baffled and clueless at what the prevailing message was about for its 1:36 running time.

Now, the plot is very easy to ascertain. Night Nanny named Tully helps people navigate the stresses of raising a modern family. But the more personal intimate themes of the unique growing relationship between Marlo and Tully wasn’t as clear. From my perspective it was initially spot on as something modernly probative filled with real emotional complexity bringing along some real cynically clever funny moments about the simultaneous demands of motherhood and being a wife. But as the film progresses along I was left feeling far more unsympathetic as to what was this story - what Marlo's story was all about. 

Tully is a very well-intended about the positive joys that normally emanate from having a family with someone you love in your life. But it's directorial execution of that dynamic as a cross-section story from the perspective of pregnancy – of parenting – of being a wife, seemingly also suggested that as a personal life choice can also be inherently  a warning sign that it will also be grim and harsh with many periods of it filled with overwhelming uncontrollable sadness and exhaustion. The fact is after watching this story I thought this film should also be a poster PSA announcement titled “YOUNG WOMEN OF AMERICA - DON”T EVERY GET EVER PREGNANT”.

Yes, Tully held my attention, but in the end it left me more cold to the idea of what motherhood is about - should be about. It didn’t evoke the right amount of empathy that I think they were aiming for when they started to put words in the screenplay. I walked out of theater feeling oddly that I was less relatable to Marlo’s family life dynamic in the end of the story than I did in the film’s beginning.

In the end Tully wants to be a modern homage to motherhood especially with mother’s day coming soon next week. But the story gets to its appointed destination with a lot of chunkiness and unexplained conversational exchanges that just did make enough sense to this viewer to make it an immediate worth your while recommendation to see in the theater.

2.75 Stars