Here’s something I rarely admit to people: I don’t watch sports, but I have a soft spot for sports movies. Athletes are the de facto gods of our pop culture pantheon, and it’s always rewarding to tuck into a film that explores the men and women behind the myths. For example, I, Tonya (2017) is a comedic deep dive into the Tonya Harding story. You can now stream this Margot Robbie/Sebastian Stan sports classic for free on Tubi
I, Tonya follows the life of young Tonya Harding as she develops her ice skating skills while trying to avoid being caught in the malevolent maelstrom of her abusive family. She has to fight for every professional victory, but even her biggest triumphs are overshadowed by her family’s sketchy, white trash reputation. The love of her boyfriend seems like it might help her finally escape her awful family’s influence, but his own brand of increasingly dangerous love may very well destroy the future she’s working so hard to build.
The cast of I, Tonya is genuinely captivating, including Allison Janney (best known for The Help and Juno) as the abusive mother whose tough love threatens to break her talented daughter. Julianne Nicholson (best known for August: Osage County and Blonde) is great as a skating coach who never stops believing in her apt pupil. And Marvel star Sebastian Stan is pitch-perfect as Tonya’s boyfriend, someone who constantly switches between sleazy and supportive in an achingly realistic portrayal of a toxic partner.
However, the best performance in I, Tonya comes from Margot Robbie; she plays Tonya Harding and imbues this complex, often hated sports figure with so many layers of pathos and hope for a better future. Everyone watching knows that her sports dreams are going to come crashing down in the worst possible way, but Robbie’s powerful performance has you rooting for her character the entire time. She plays Harding as an ambitious, talented young woman trapped by inescapable circumstances, turning this doomed skater into a relatable, tragic figure undone by someone else’s hubris.
Though this quirky dramedy was much smaller in scale than your average superhero film, it soared with moviegoers: against a budget of only $11 million, I, Tonya earned $58.9 million at the box office. In terms of ROI, that’s more impressive than many DC and even Marvel movies, especially in the final days of the DCEU. And it’s fun to see both Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan get to stretch their acting chops in a way that’s nearly impossible in the tights-and-flights movies that helped to make them so famous in the first place.
Even though its problematic punchlines are a bit on the nose (or should that be on the leg?), I, Tonya really left a mark on the critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a score of 90 percent, with critics generally praising the movie’s keen balance of humor and tragedy. They also had special praise for Margot Robbie, whose larger-than-life performance helps bring one of the messiest stories in sports history to brilliant, bloody life.
Will you agree that I, Tonya is the most weirdly-engrossing sports film ever made, or will this movie be on thin ice with you by the end of Act One? You won’t know until you skate on over to Tubi and stream it for free. Fair warning: when it’s over, you’ll likely agree that Sebastian Stan is one of the most brilliantly underutilized actors in Hollywood, and Marvel is absolutely wasting his talents.
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