Hollywood clearly has lost the ability to realize what a well crafted comedy is about, because most comedies I review are banal, unoriginal, gross types of comedies. Once in a while we are handed a little gem within the genre of comedy: "State and Main", "Thank You for Smoking", "Jasmine", "Midnight in Paris", and the like. So now we have been offered "Tully" to sink our teeth into. Why can't there be more comedies like this?
This story centers around Marlo (Charlize Theron), a mother of three including a newborn, is gifted a night nanny by her brother, Craig (Mark Duplass). Hesitant to the extravagance at first, Marlo comes to form a unique bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging young nanny named Tully (Mackenzie Davis). Although Tully is young of years, she eventually gets Marlo to open up and share her feelings of feeling that her life is a trap and extremely boring and mundane. It truly shows us that even though an individual is older chronologically, we really don't know what life can be about without someone else outside the routine box to show us the way.
Others to round out the cast are Ron Livingston as Drew, Marlo's husband, Elaine Tan as Elyse, Asher Miles Fallica as Jonah, Lia Frankland as Sarah, Maddie Dixon-Poirier as Emmy, Gameela Wright as Laurie, Emily Haine as Barista, Colleen Wheeler as Dr. Smythe and Joshua Pak as Dallas.
This was brilliantly directed with subtlety by Jason Reitman ("Thank You for Smoking" '05, "Juno" '07, "Up in the Air" '09, "Young Adult" '11, "Labor Day" '13, "Men, Women & Children" '14) plus shorts and TV. By his very resume, subtlety is this filmmaker's trademark in that his characters are always so real in their conveyance to the audience, "Tully" being no exception. Theron's character development as a tired, uninteresting housewife and mother is perfection, and I can't help but think that this is partly due to Reitman's direction. If you like Reitman's brand of direction, his "The Front Runner" is in post-production at this point slated for a 2018 release. As opposed to other comedies, this was incredibly well written by Diablo Cody ("Juno" '07, "Jennifer's Body" '09, "Young Adult" '11, "Paradise" '13, "Ricki and the Flash" '15, "Raised by Wolves" (TV movie) '17) plus shorts and TV. This writer knows how to delineate her characters extremely carefully so that not only does it present the characters wirh painstaking realism, but also the characters are amazingly realistic in their presence. This is definitely present in "Juno", "Young Adult" and this film. And however this did have a couple of small places of choppiness, it certainly wasn't enough to deter to the very original characters that comprise this movie. There will be more to see of Cody's work since "Barbie" is in pre-production right now slated for a 2020 release.
This isn't a physical, belly laugh type of comedy and wasn't produced for a mass audience appeal, but if quality directing, writing and acting is your thing, you'll love this. It's a quirky, somewhat darker outlook at a routine life as a mom, but to see what a mother goes through on an every day, routine basis gives the rest of us the empathetic view that motherhood is definitely the toughest, and most thankless job on the planet. Go out and hug a mom and say thank you.
Out of 4 Stars: 3.5 Rated: R 96mins.
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