“Diablo Cody was once a stripper. Now, she’s an Oscar-winning screenwriter.”
– Everyone, 2007
Many moons ago, a director named Jason Reitman gifted us with the film Juno, a lowish-budget comedy about teen pregnancy written by the mysterious Diablo Cody. When the film was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay (which it won), it increased the celebrity profile of Reitman, Ellen Page, Michael Cera, and Jason Bateman in a pretty significant way. Cody, on the other hand, became the talk of the town for other reasons.
At one point in her life, Cody donned a skimpy outfit and pursued a very intimate relationship with a floor-to-ceiling metal rod. This was very important to the Academy and pop culture in general, because it implied a genuine rags-to-riches story; a down-on-her-luck stripper rises up from her filthy, degrading lifestyle and achieves big mainstream success. She works hard for the money. Good for her.
Ironically, this perception was somewhat erroneous. While writing for Entertainment Weekly and other publications, Cody had, on a whim, decided to sign up for amateur night at a strip club, and enjoyed the experience. She did it regularly for about a year, and it seemed to be less about making ends meet in the face of extreme poverty, and more about making a “profound feminist statement.” She’s an empowered woman, and if she wants to sensually ride a pole for the entertainment of sexually frustrated older men, she will, dammit!
Cody never really tried to hide any of this. In fact, she published a memoir about her experiences as a stripper. Well-meaning individuals simply jumped to the conclusion that her story was one of rapid upward career mobility, and as a result, she was the talk of Hollywood for a brief moment. In my eyes, Cody’s experience as an exotic dancer was simply class tourism, and should only be a minor curiosity, a footnote in her career. The only aspect of Diablo Cody the stripper experience highlights is her determination to challenge the status quo regarding that particular occupation. She is essentially the female character referred to in Pulp’s 1995 song, “Common People.”
I’ll admit, I was a Diablo Cody fan for a time. I saw Juno multiple times in theaters, and I was rather vocal about my love for it. After the success of Juno, Showtime immediately announced they intended to pick up Cody’s pilot for United States of Tara, a show I am still rather fond of that dealt with a woman attempting to cope with Dissociative Identity Disorder. In 2009, Cody wrote Jennifer’s Body, which was absolute garbage. It combined Juno’s emphasis on youth slang with a really shitty horror plot, atrocious acting, and Megan Fox. This is where most Diablo Cody fans tuned out, and rightfully so.
On a personal level, I found Jennifer’s Body immensely entertaining in spite of being a poorly-crafted film, so when Cody wrote Young Adult in 2011, I was willing to give it a chance.
Young Adult starred Charlize Theron as an obnoxious and frustrated woman stuck in arrested development. She returns to her hometown, convinced that she is destined to be with her now-married high school boyfriend. The film does a very good job of straddling comedy and drama, and I maintain that it’s Cody’s best work. Critics were generally positive or neutral, and audiences were even less kind to Young Adult. The biggest complaint was simply that Theron’s character was so obnoxious that sitting through the film was a chore.
A few years ago, I decided to watch Juno again. There has never been a greater disparity between my opinion of a film upon release, and my opinion upon watching it years later. I hate Juno. I hate Juno so much, and to all of those people in my life that I convinced to spend actual money to see it in a theater, I owe you an apology. Ellen Page is so flat, Michael Cera is just playing Michael Cera, Rainn Wilson is painful to even look at, every character talks like every other character, the dialog is so specific to young adults in 2007 that you could practically publish its slang in its own dictionary just as A Clockwork Orange did with Nadsat, and that disgustingly twee soundtrack can rot in hell. For a film to feel this horribly dated just ten years after its release is actually a pretty impressive feat.
Still, as previously indicated, I didn’t mind Young Adult.
At some point in the last year, I received word that Cody and Reitman were collaborating again, this time in a slightly more serious film called Tully. Once again, Charlize Theron was to play the female lead, so I had some serious expectations here. To add to the anticipation, early festival reviews were good, and so were critic scores in general. This movie sits at a solid 87% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this review. Bear in mind, this is after the failure of Jennifer’s Body and Young Adult, so Cody isn’t exactly a critical darling right now.
Theron plays Marlo, a woman pregnant with her third child. Her son Jonah, who is frequently talked about but rarely relevant to the film, has an undiagnosed developmental disorder that is clearly meant to be vague autism, and he’s having a really tough time at school, a situation that eats up quite a bit of Marlo’s time. When she finally pops out that third child, motherhood is just a little too much for her to handle. Her friends recommend that she get a night nurse, and one evening Tully appears. Tully the night nurse is a young, spunky free spirit, but there are a number of bizarre red flags present, alerting Marlo that there may be something sinister about Tully and her intentions.
So, we’re going to get into spoiler territory. In some regards, Tully is a comedy, and spoilers are typically not a problem because the success of a comedy is usually based upon how funny the film was, and not its plot. The fact that I even have to give a spoiler warning is a spoiler itself, but I have an obligation to do so. This movie desperately wants us to believe that Tully is a psychopath with designs on her husband and her children. The first 2/3 of the film is essentially an insincere remake of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle with poor comedic timing.
Marlo and Tully spend time getting into trouble, participating in some intense girl talk, and breast feeding in awkward situations. Marlo relays her marital problems to Tully, who seems to suggest the solution may be a ménage à trois. The two sneak into the bedroom, and Tully has sex with Marlo’s husband while Marlo explains to Tully what her husband likes. This is treated as normal behavior, and is never mentioned again.
Throughout the film, it’s very apparent that Marlo is suffering from bipolar disorder, or something similar. Her mood changes quite frequently, and when Tully is around, she’s practically manic. This is supposed to hint at the shocking twist at the end of the film. This turn of events is surprising not because it’s interesting, but because it’s completely unbelievable that a film made by an accomplished director, writer, and actors would use one of the most cliché, overused, and intellectually offensive tropes in cinema history.
After Marlo falls asleep at the wheel and crashes, she wakes up in the hospital, and the truth is revealed to us. Tully isn’t real. Tully is a figment of Marlo’s imagination, a byproduct of her postpartum mania. She is the physical manifestation of her former, more daring and interesting self.
This movie pulls a Fight Club.
There’s even a montage of earlier scenes with Tully removed, to really, really drive this twist home. The two sides of Marlo have one last pleasant conversation, and Tully leaves. Marlo’s life is now complete, I guess, and her son’s autism goes away.
I’m not going to touch on the autism plot point any more than I have to, because it makes my brain hurt. Let’s just suspend our disbelief, and take it for granted that Tully is the cure for autism or something. Even if we ignore this, Tully’s third act twist is both asinine and inconsequential. The revelation itself only makes Tully an irrelevant character, but the film has the balls to treat it as a real game-changer. There aren’t even enough instances of Tully almost interacting with the people in Marlo’s life to elicit any kind of thought or discussion after the movie ends.
The real icing on the cake here is that Tully isn’t Cody’s first time dealing with a character who has multiple identities. In fact, that’s the entire premise of United States of Tara. She had three whole seasons to explore dissociative identity disorder, and while Tully’s twist involves a slightly different ailment, the movie feels far too familiar because of it.
I’ve seen a number of positive reviews for Tully that do acknowledge its potentially polarizing ending, but praise the rest of the film. I’d be on board for that, if Marlo wasn’t a more boring rehash of Theron’s character in Young Adult.
The success rate of Tully’s attempts at humor is remarkably low. In fact, it was nearly impossible for me to ascertain precisely when this movie is trying to be funny. Were the embarrassing public tantrums of Marlo’s autistic son supposed to be funny? Is the creepy sex scene funny? Are Marlo’s mental health issues a source of humor? I think a majority of the humor was supposed to come from Cody’s absurd approach to dialog, but this style wears out its welcome quite early.
While watching the film, I won’t deny that I was somewhat entertained, and fairly engaged. Theron isn’t really phoning it in, so she’s at least entertaining to watch. If the film had scrapped its twist, something that wouldn’t be very hard to do, I might be able to respect this at a distance, and see it as another entry in the oft-maligned mumblecore genre that I’m required to enjoy in spite of having profoundly neutral feelings about it. It’s clear the film was written to support its twist ending, and that’s a part of why it’s such a betrayal. If I suspected studio meddling had required Cody to include a more exciting finale, I might soften up a bit, but this is clearly just pretentious writing.
I’m definitely not the first to accuse Cody’s work of being pretentious. When Juno was released, that word was thrown around pretty frequently. Tully brings to mind another adjective: smug. I suppose the fact that Cody was brazen enough to use such a tired twist could be seen as daring, but it really comes across more as the writer demonstrating an unearned elevated self-worth. This should be exactly what I expect from the kind of person who strips for fun rather than money, and Tully really forces me to suspect that her brief stripper days came from an even more cynical place than I initially suspected.
This film’s vocal fans have been pushing for Oscar recognition, especially for Theron. If Tully is nominated in any category, this will be a clear sign that 2018 hasn’t exactly been a stand-out year. My hope is that Tully is quietly snubbed by the Academy, and quickly fades from the public consciousness, just like Theron’s imaginary friend.
3/10