The Eyes of Tammy Faye — Review
Christ is back in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield.
It’s an adaptation of a documentary with the same name, about the rise and fall of the televangelist couple Tammy Faye Bakker and her husband, Jim Bakker. The couple creates the world’s largest religious broadcasting network (*cough* cult *cough*), using Tammy’s angelic singing voice, silly puppets, and Jim’s manipulative messaging while scamming viewers into sending them money.
If you’ve seen the documentary, I’m not entirely sure why you would need to see this film. At its core, it feels like an acting piece. A film made for best acting nominations. Will Jessica take it home? I doubt it. I’ll elaborate on this below.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye gives an interesting and intimate perspective on Tammy. While practically everyone else in the church was against the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, Tammy was for them and that alone made me love her and want her to succeed. Even though these are all important characteristics, especially for someone pushing religion, she was still scamming people and taking their money to buy expensive fur coats and loads of make-up. The writing makes Tammy out to be rather innocent and naïve. I have a hard time believing this was the case in real life.
The pacing moves quickly throughout their years on television as their popularity grows, and I have conflicting feelings on that. It was nice to get the story progressing, but they left out a lot of important side stories, like Jim’s affairs. This was only said through dialogue in the third act. Had we seen visuals of bad little church boy Jim cheating, the scene where he makes Tammy confess her own adulterous encounters on television and the climax of the film could have been more impactful.
Jessica Chastain is a great actress and the makeup department completely altered her face. Still, I wasn’t convinced she was anyone other than Jessica Chastain in heavy makeup. While she absolutely deserves the nomination, I don’t think she should take the win over Kristen Stewart.
What is there to say about Andrew Garfield? Meh. He was good, but I think there are a lot of other actors that could have suited this role just as well. I imagine all of his energy went into his performance for Tick, Tick…Boom! and it shows. Additionally, the romantic chemistry between Garfield and Chastain was about as hot and heavy as an earthworm shriveling up in the sun.
Entering the third act the script felt off as if the writer had no idea how or where to end the story. The couple starts their descent into a pit of shame and despair when Jim is arrested and Tammy acts all surprised in her million-dollar lakehouse. This is where we learn about Jim’s affairs and other nefarious activities, which as I mentioned earlier would have been more interesting to see visually.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad film. I watched the first half, fell asleep, and then felt gripped enough to finish it the next day, so with that…
I give this one a 6/10.
