Sam Morrison’s review published on Letterboxd:
Where do you draw the line between informative and exploitative? Seems that many times, things were quite blurred. Do we paint a vivid picture of this woman's life, or do we add to the drama so that our audience will grow?
During its most disturbing moments that dealt with the sheer plethora of abuse, I had to take some incidents with a grain of salt, as it has never been properly documented if those specifics went down. Not only that, but many scenes came with an attached copyrighted song. Does anyone else feel that you're going to have a hard time selling the distress of relived trauma if you slap a hit song from decades past with it?
Once the "incident" came to take up the second hour of film, the story of abused child rising to overcome the odds sort of fell in the background. This film is a biopic and understandably, cannot have a neat narrative that fiction can, where all three acts tie into the synopsis equally. But when you drop that bomb, you drop that bomb.
From where I'm standing, the move to hone in on everything that took place through Tonya and Jeff's criminal case was an unwelcome one. I wanted to see more of skills on the ice rink being improved, on the deeper impact her home life created in her work ethic to be perfect where her identity lay.
I, Tonya felt hollow within its more heartbreaking moments, and more capacious in its hollow moments. Though the performances themselves can't be praised enough, as this is my immediate pick for best performance from Margot Robbie.
