Tully (2018)

[Jake Lipson]

Title: Tully (2018)

Tagline: See how the mother half lives.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston, Colleen Wheeler, Elaine Tan, Maddie Dixon-Poirier, Asher Miles Fallica, Lia Frankland, Bella Star Choy, Crystal Lonneberg, Emily Haine, Katie Hayashida, Marceline Hugot, Michael Patrick Lane, Elfina Luk, Joshua Pak, Gameela Wright, Candus Churchill, Shade Rupe, Stormy Ent, Tattiawna Jones, John Shaw, Kevin Clash, Kiff VandenHeuvel, Fran Brill

Release: 2018-05-04

Runtime: 96

Plot: Marlo, a mother of three including a newborn, is gifted a night nanny by her brother. Hesitant to the extravagance at first, Marlo comes to form a bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging nanny named Tully.

I did a search thinking that there would already be a thread for this movie but couldn't find one.

Tully is the new movie directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, who of course previously collaborated on Juno and Young Adult. This one has Charlize Theron as Marlo, an overworked, stressed-out mom of two (then three, since she's pregnant at the beginning of the film) who hires a night nanny, Tully (Mackenzie Davis) to take care of her baby so she can get some sleep.

I saw it this afternoon and thought it was great, but to elaborate on the plot would constitute spoilers for one of the most carefully written things I've seen in a while. So I mostly wanted to start this thread to suggest that people check the movie out.

Its $3.1 million gross in sixth place this weekend suggests that it's not clicking with audiences to a major degree, and even though I thought it was great, the predominantly older audience that did show up this afternoon was extremely vocal on the way out (and in some parts, during the movie) about how weird they thought it was for reasons I don't want to spoil.

I think the smart play for this film would have been a limited release rollout in art houses, which Focus Features has done successfully many times before, but it's gone wide and is playing in my big multiplex across the hall from Infinity War. I think releasing it this way is equivalent to throwing it to the wolves, which is a mistake. If it had gone limited, I doubt I would have seen it this quickly into its release, but I do think that would have been better for the movie.

So...see it while you can. It's really good.

 

[benbess]

I enjoyed Tully too. ++

 

[TravisR]

I'm a big of fan of Cody and Reitman's previous movies (Juno and the wonderful Young Adult) so Tully was right up my alley. It's alternately funny, sad, odd and realistic.

 

[Jake Lipson]

How did your audiences react to the ending? (You might want to use spoiler tags.)

 

[TravisR]

How did your audiences react to the ending? (You might want to use spoiler tags.)

As the credits rolled, I overheard two middle aged women behind me saying

Spoiler

"That ending was weird but it was a good movie." "Yeah, I liked it."

Overall, I think people will like the ending because while they aren't expecting it, it still makes sense so it plays as a surprise.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Spoiler

Overall, I think people will like the ending

Spoiler

I think I was the youngest person in my screening by a lot. The older women around me were dumbfounded, which was hilarious for me because I think it really worked very nicely. When Drew told the employee her maiden name, someone behind me actually whisper-yelled, "BUT THAT'S THE OTHER GIRL'S NAME!", and then when Tully entered the hospital room, "There she is, her imaginary friend!" But she had also been loudly complaining about how weird the movie was throughout, like when Tully watches Marlo breastfeed (which now makes sense) and when Tully is shown to be in that position with Drew (which also now makes sense.) I had been wondering early on why the kids didn't seem to know about Tully, or why Drew wouldn't have asked to meet her, but then it all clicked.

To me, It's one of those really great cases where you think it's a twist but then you realize it's not really, because it was actually the whole idea in the first place. I thought it stitched in really nicely and made the things that I thought stood out as odd fall right into place. Like when Craig said, "You called her?" in response to Drew mentioning the night nanny, which Craig should have known since we were to think he was paying the bill. It's a really excellent piece of writing from Diablo Cody. It's something I sort of wish I had written, in that even though I could never have written this movie -- I don't have the perspective on motherhood to do this -- I do hope in my own writing that I execute things as effectively as this does, if that makes sense.

My audience found the movie very bizarre and were largely still struggling to comprehend it on the way out. I think you're right that the ending will be liked, but I would add a qualifier to it that it will be liked and appreciated by people who are open to unorthodox storytelling in general. I think a lot of people in my screening probably came to it expecting a more conventional motherhood comedy, and those people are going to leave flummoxed and probably won't reccomend the movie. This is another reason that I think a limited rollout in art houses would have suited the movie better than a wide release against the second weekend of Infinity War in huge multiplexes.

On the way out, I had a few minutes, so I went over to the automated ticket thing in the lobby and looked at a list of the "movies starting in the next hour." These included four separate screens of Infinity War, plus one each for Black Panther, Isle of Dogs (which itself had a slow limited rollout and took a while to reach us) and the next screening of Tully, since ours had just let out. This to me demonstrated how out of place Tully was in our big 20-screen Cinemark.

I really think a film that is this unique would have been better served by at last starting in art houses to let buzz form. It also probably doesn't help that reviewers can't really describe all the things that make it unique without venturing into spoiler territory.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Wait - so this isn't a sequel to "Sully"???

 

[Jake Lipson]

this isn't a sequel to "Sully"?

No.

That is something I can actually say outside of spoiler tags.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

A New York Times article (not the actual review) unfortunately blew the ending in their first paragraph so I know how it ends. Is the movie still worth seeing despite that knowledge?

 

[TravisR]

A New York Times article (not the actual review) unfortunately blew the ending in their first paragraph so I know how it ends. Is the movie still worth seeing despite that knowledge?

The movie has more going for it than that so, while that's unfortunate, I would see it.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Is the movie still worth seeing despite that knowledge?

Yes, I think so.

It will play differently knowing the ending than it would have if you didn't, but the ending is far from its only value.

I would like to see it again now that I know the ending, to see it from a different vantage point, but since it's not likely to stick around, I'm not sure if I will get back to it until disc.

Regardless of the fact that you know where it's going, the movie has a lot to say and is really smartly written. Reitman's direction isn't as flashy or noticeable as some other people working today, but I liked what he did with it. It felt very lived-in and real and genuine to me. Both actresses (Theron and Davis) give exceptionally rich performances which I think are deserving of Oscar consideration they likely won't get due to the movie's early-year release and under-the-radar box office presence.

Of course, it's also a talky drama that won't lose much impact if you see it on Blu-ray at home versus in the theater. But I like supporting that kind of thing in a theater. Especially since you have Movie Pass anyway, I would consider it to be a valuable use of that subscription.

That being said, whoever wrote the NYT piece should have known better, and so should have the editor, even though it wasn't the review.

 

[Jake Lipson]

A good interview with Theron and Cody about the movie: https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a20096325/tully-movie-charlize-theron-diablo-cody-interview/

 

[Chris Will]

I knew the ending before I saw it and I thought the movie cheated.

Spoiler

Movies like The Sixth Sense went out of there way to show certain characters not interacting with other things.

“Tully” throws that out the window. If Tully wasn’t real then how could she hold the baby? You saw 2 bikes after there bike ride. She ordered a drink from the bartender. She locks the bathroom door in the club. Drew made eye contact with both of them during the threesome. Those are just some of the examples I can think of right now. Since I knew the twist, I went in looking to see how they were going to disguise it. Well, they didn’t. They played it straight until the crash. So, they cheated and I didn’t enjoy the movie.

Tully shouldn’t have been shown holding the baby, shouldn’t have seen her riding the bike (just have her suddenly show up). Drew should have only made contact with Marlo during the sex scene. Knowing the ending kinda ruined the movie because instead of use clever editing to hide the twist, they played it straight and it didn’t feel earned.

 

[TravisR]

The fact that the only thing anyone (including me) is really talking about regarding this movie is the twist is why I wish there was no twist.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

The fact that the only thing anyone (including me) is really talking about regarding this movie is the twist is why I wish there was no twist.

True. The "twist" is a major problem - for many of the reasons Chris spells out above - but those aren't its ONLY problems, as it suffers from many.

It's a mess of a movie and it just doesn't work on most levels.

Casting Theron was a mistake because we know she's not the dumpy, overweight woman we see in the film. When she yells at Tully about how ya can't stay hot forever, I wanted to reply "but you are still hot, Charlize! We just saw you look awesome in "Atomic Blonde""

They needed an actress who's not still supermodel hot "in real life" to pull off those scenes. We know "real Charlize" too well to accept her gripes about the ways the body declines.

And the scenes with the son frustrated the crap out of me. Anyone who knows anything about the subject realizes within 20 seconds of seeing the kid that he's autistic, and yet no one can figure this out - even though they've got him in a fancy private school and have allegedly taken him to multiple specialists!

That's just sloppy screenwriting. If the movie had said "the doctors suspected autism but..." and gave us some reason the kid isn't autistic, then fair enough - the movie portrays him as nearly textbook autistic, but at least that'd give us an explanation.

Nope - we're supposed to believe the kid's condition is a major mystery, even though both my friend and I knew immediately that he was on the autism spectrum.

Also, what school tells a parent to send their kid to a new school in April? I've seen it happen for really severe cases, but not for a kid like Jonah. That was just a cheap dramatic conceit and a way to show the kid at the new school - a scene that went nowhere, oddly enough.

Jonah meets the helpful teacher but there's no follow-up. Does this school help him? Does it have a program that fits his needs? Does the kid see a specialist?

Who knows? Just another loose end in a film full of them!

This movie wants us to see it as a "realistic" portrayal of motherhood, whereas it couldn't possibly be less of one.

Spoiler

Believe it or not, most mothers don't go through dissociative episodes in which they suddenly imagine another person exists who cares for them.

The movie's an iffy mix of fantasy and reality that uses its "twist" as a "get out of jail free" card in an attempt to excuse all its flaws...

 

[TravisR]

Casting Theron was a mistake because we know she's not the dumpy, overweight woman we see in the film. When she yells at Tully about how ya can't stay hot forever, I wanted to reply "but you are still hot, Charlize! We just saw you look awesome in "Atomic Blonde""

I'll show what a shallow asshole I am and say that I think she did look like a woman who was beautiful when she was young but that beauty had begun to fade. Yes, I realize that when Charlize Theron gets together with her personal trainer and puts on some make up, she'll be stunning again but for this movie, I bought her as a woman who was approaching middle age, had three kids and didn't have enough time (or maybe even the money) for a gym membership.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Yeah, I had no trouble accepting Theron in the role either; she's a talented actor, and she played the part well. Whatever quibbles I might have with some of the writing choices, I can find no fault in either the casting of Theron or the way she played the role.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I'll show what a shallow asshole I am and say that I think she did look like a woman who was beautiful when she was young but that beauty had begun to fade. Yes, I realize that when Charlize Theron gets together with her personal trainer and puts on some make up, she'll be stunning again but for this movie, I bought her as a woman who was approaching middle age, had three kids and didn't have enough time (or maybe even the money) for a gym membership.

I would've bought Theron as an overweight middle-aged woman fine - if the script didn't force her to bitch about the unforgiving nature of time on the body.

Like I said, we just saw her in "Atomic Blonde" last year, and she didn't show those ravages of time.

So I'll alter my comment somewhat to say that CT isn't necessarily miscast for the role most of the time - it's just when she has to bitch about the "inevitability" of saggy bodies. Tough to swallow when we know CT usually has an amazing body and she only looks the way she does in the movie because she gained 50 pounds!

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Yeah, I had no trouble accepting Theron in the role either; she's a talented actor, and she played the part well. Whatever quibbles I might have with some of the writing choices, I can find no fault in either the casting of Theron or the way she played the role.

Like I said, I'd be fine with the removal of those "no one looks good at my age"-style lines.

CT does fine in the part and the movie is well-acted overall. It's just a badly flawed script that's the main issue...

 

[SamT]

Tonight I saw this and the night before I saw Young Adult (the same director). I enjoyed Young Adult much more. I found THAT plot point unnecessary and distracting.