The Eyes of Tammy Faye was reviewed out of the Toronto Film Festival, where it made its world premiere. It hits theaters on Sept. 17.
Tammy Faye Messner (nee Bakker) was unapologetically preposterous, a plucky performer who channeled her love of Jesus into puppet shows, televangelist talk shows, and a library of music albums. She did it all with her signature look of big hair, bold outfits, and makeup permanently tattooed around her eyes and mouth. To some (including many members of the LGBTQIA+ community), this made her a beloved icon of empowerment, individuality, and Christian love. To others (including a slew of late-night hosts), her eagerness and tackiness made her a perfect target for cheap punchlines. Even the 2000 documentary, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which aimed to reframe her story with in-depth interviews with the maligned woman herself, couldn’t help but mock her, offering jibes about her face and her “addiction” to Diet Coke. Now, that dated doc has been adapted into a biopic of the same name, starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as Messner and her first husband, Jim Bakker, respectively. While this version shows more compassion for its subject, it comes off more like a mumbled sermon than a powerful proclamation.
Screenwriter Abe Sylvia pulls heavily from the documentary. Excerpts of Messner’s talking head interviews are copied and pasted into dialogue. Scenes from Messner and Bakker’s television archives are re-enacted by Chastain and Garfield. Memorable caught-on-camera sequences from the doc — like an awkward makeover moment and an excruciatingly embarrassing TV pitch meeting — are doggedly dramatized. Between these cherrypicked bits, Sylvia fills in the blanks of her childhood, her alarmingly short courtship with Bakker, and the trouble in paradise that lived behind the scenes of their television/real estate empire.
In these sections, factual accuracy is frequently ignored in favor of poetic license. For instance, a chipper college-going Tammy Faye excitedly tells her new crush Jim about how she’s the oldest of eight children. In real life, Bakker didn’t know she had siblings until after they’d married. It’s a strange fact to change, as it might have reflected the hastiness of their nuptials better than Sylvia’s method: a quick scene of guilt-ridden dry-humping, followed by a comedy cut of the pair married. Sex is slathered throughout the film, likely intended to bring some sweaty humanity to the pair’s squeaky clean (pre-scandal) image. Though arguably salacious, these scenes do help ground Tammy Faye as a woman of more than joy, but also of wants and desires that were increasingly ignored by her spouse.
The more startling changes from the doc are all the things Sylvia’s script chooses to leave out. Covering from 1957 to 1999, The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s plotline might have included her marriage to Roe Messner, her cancer diagnosis, and/or her return to television. However, all are oddly omitted from this story. Even her life-changing rehab stint is reduced to a single line of dialogue. Perhaps this was so the film could center not so much on Messner’s life but on her tumultuous relationship with Bakker. After all, this is where the most Oscar-baiting drama might be found, both in lusty pep talks in a golden bathroom and screaming matches over ambition, affluence, and Satan’s influence. Regrettably, Messner’s resilience isn’t properly showcased when you skip so many of her most challenging struggles.
Still, it’s easy to see why Chastain would want the role of Tammy Faye. Sylvia’s script does deliver a showcase role that allows her to sing, weep, giggle, and play a character who is a mix of sunshine and worried mob wife. Lifting her pitch to a Messner-like trill and saddling on a prosthetic jawline to better resemble the Midwestern preacher, Chastain is nearly unrecognizable. But there’s much more than these flashy transformations at play. Chastain gracefully charts the highs and lows of Tammy Faye over the course of decades. With a broad smile and penetrating stare, she smoothly embodies the impetuous youth of a newlywed, then the heartache of a wife fearing she’s losing her partner’s interest, then the inner fire of a survivor who must rebuild her life.
Garfield matches her for energy, and brings a boyish charm to Jim, which helps sell their initial attraction. His performance slyly slides into slimy terrain, as Jim’s big smile becomes less and less convincing while begging his public for pledges. However, their chemistry can’t keep this film from feeling woefully clunky. Callously dancing around Jessica Hahn’s allegations of rape against Jim Bakker, The Eyes of Tammy Faye focuses on how the fraud accusations broke their marriage. Not so surprisingly, a drama about real estate crime isn’t all that exciting. The film plows through plot points with a garish assault of montages, featuring news coverage and shocking headlines, overlaid by Chastain doing another Messner song number. Thus, the trauma of her life turns achingly episodic, her pain once more papered over by flashy spectacle.
Director Michael Showalter has made his name writing or directing envelope-pushing comedies like the raunchy parody Wet Hot American Summer, the tragedy-grounded rom-com The Big Sick, and the darkly funny Search Party. But he seems in over his head juggling essential factual details, expected biopic backstory, highlights from the namesake documentary, poignant drama, and a handful of laughs. Sweeping cinematography from Mike Gioulakis (Us, Under the Silver Lake, It Follows) gives the film a look of prestige, coming off as important, gorgeous, and thoughtful. It’s an attention-grabbing aesthetic that could court Academy voters, but ultimately this biopic feels uncertain about what it wants to say about Tammy Faye.
The jibes at her appearance are still made, by strangers or foes instead of the filmmakers. Sequences about her activism — including her groundbreaking interview with a gay AIDS patient in the middle of the AIDS epidemic — paint her as a warrior for social justice. Still, there’s a wobbliness when addressing her agency within the marriage, the TV network, and the financial fraud. The film seems so earnest to celebrate Tammy Faye that it commits the biopic sin of glossing over her flaws. All of her mistakes are portrayed so sympathetically that they seem almost inevitable, and therefore excusable. While well-intentioned, this perspective feels frustratingly fawning and pandering. It’s been 14 years since her death, and filmmakers still can’t grapple with the true complexity of Tammy Faye, a woman who was far from perfect but still divine.