Tully

Grade: B+

I don’t think there’s a director alive who has a track record like Jason Reitman’s (Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult). While others may have better individual movies than some of the aforementioned, does anyone else have the consistent unblemished streak that Reitman has? Need I remind you, the man behind The Godfather and Apocalypse Now also directed Jack.

There is something about Jason Reitman’s films that delights me every time. They are not too “out there,” but just a little off-center, and filled to the brim with thoughtfulness, charm, and wisdom. A few of them (Young Adult, Juno, TYFS) have relatively short running times. His latest one, Tully, which opened yesterday, clocks in at an hour and 36 minutes. The others I named are that long or shorter, but they feel longer, in the good way, because they are so rich. This is Reitman’s third collaboration with writer Diablo Cody, who did Young Adult and Juno.

Charlize Theron plays Marlo, a 40-year-old mom of two who is about to pop out a third. Her second child, Jonah, is on the autism spectrum and in danger of being expelled from his kindergarten class. In an early scene, we see him have a meltdown because Theron has to go to a different parking lot than usual, since the parking lot he’s used to being dropped off at is full. Jason Bateman is a regular in Reitman’s movies. He’s not in Tully, but I’m giving the “Jason Bateman role” title to the character of Craig, Marlo’s brother – played by Mark Duplass, who looks, sounds, and acts like Bateman. Craig is extremely well-off, and offers to pay for a night nanny for Marlo once the baby is born. Marlo finally decides to pull the trigger, and calls the nanny, and one night, in comes Tully, with the proclamation “I’m here to take care of you.” Mackenzie Davis plays Tully, as a perky, plucky, mid-20s free spirit. Tully and Marlo get along famously, as they bond over sangria and the TV show Gigolos. And Tully works wonders for the baby and the family’s life, morale, and well-being. She cleans, makes cupcakes overnight, and is amazingly perceptive and wise beyond her years.

I was all set to give Tully a certain rating that I’d have been pleased to type out, but I have to dock it half a grade due to the events and revelations of its last few minutes. Scroll down to the grade and save the rest of this paragraph for later if you plan on seeing the movie. There is a twist that I was absolutely blindsided by. It came from several fields away from left field, and brought things into M. Night Shyamalan territory. Like the ending of The Sixth Sense, it will make you replay and question everything you’d seen up until that point, but Tully’s twist stretches credibility and doesn’t answer many nagging questions that will come up. It took me out of the film, muddied up and undercut the narrative/message, but most importantly – it wasn’t the movie I wanted and thought we were getting for the first 90%, and once it veered off, it didn’t feel like the same one anymore. Still, though, I heartily recommend it for its excellent majority, and so you can marvel at just how weird it gets in the conclusion. Tully, like most of Jason Reitman’s films, is lean but voluminous. He can do so much with so little.

Grade: B+