Tammy (3 Stars)

Life isn't fair. You're gonna have to scrape and claw for everything you want.

The trailer for "Tammy" was so hilarious that I instantly decided to watch the film. Unfortunately the scene shown at length in the trailer was the film's funniest scene. Nothing else lived up to it.

Tammy is a fat girl in small town Illinois who works in a fast food restaurant. Yes, I know it's not politically correct to call a woman fat, but since most of the film's jokes are about her weight I think it's appropriate to emphasise it so bluntly. After being unfairly fired she decides to drive to Niagara Falls. Her horny old grandmother tags along for the ride. For the next 80 minutes we have jokes about Tammy's size and her grandmother's libido. There's also a romantic element to the story. Tammy meets a handsome farmer. Can he love her despite her size?

It's a cute little story which encourages us to laugh at the fat girl. Tammy shows no regrets for the way she looks, she accepts herself, which is a wonderful thing, but her (misguided?) overconfidence in her good looks is used to ridicule her even more. I expected and hoped for a moment of seriousness at the end, when the audience would be made ashamed of themselves for laughing at someone else's misfortune, but it never came. It's not a film for an overweight woman (or man) to watch to find comfort. Except that Tammy finds true love in the end. Okay, I know that's a spoiler, but you would have guessed it anyway.