With plenty of “to camera” confessions, this is a fun exploration of American class-war tabloid-scandal in one of the 90s most famous sporting moments.

I fully remember this debacle.  I was at an age when I was most interested in the Olympics generally, and it was the exciting time when they finally split the Winter and Summer Olympics up, resulting in a Winter double up.  And tv news was just beginning to cut more tabloid teeth, so this excellent story of iceskater kneecapping was hot property, even in QLD!  But that’s just “the incident” and this movie traces everything that led to that point.

In many ways, it’s straight up rags-to-sequins, rough kid from the tough side of town has a skating super-power and ends up competing against the rich princesses of the skater-world.  Comedy and class-war ensues.  There is a lot of physical violence in this film, with Tonya providing the whipping-girl for her Mum, her husband, and as she so eloquently puts it, for *you the audience* who enjoyed her failures.  

The characters feel larger than life, but the end credits provide a couple of quick character studies of the real people from real footage of the time – the actors have nailed them.  And ultimately, that’s why this is a great film – the source material was unbelievable – which is why it was such a reality-tv-news sensation at the time.  And this, followed in quick succession by the OJ Simpson debacle, probably led to the network realisation that truth can be cut as better stories than fiction… paving the way for the boom of reality tv in the early 2000s.  

Overall, this flick is a great recreation of the situation, and as best we need to know, of the story of Tonya’s life.

J* gives it 4 stars.

PS.  It could have had more stars, but I docked it a fraction for failing to secure the rights necessary to end with this… in the lead up to this scene I whispered to my companions… “I’m pretty certain one of them skates to the **** **** theme music” and my 94 Winter Olympics memory was totally triple axle on point.  It would have been such a fitting end:

<review written in 2018>