Tully (2018)
Directed by Jason Reitman
Marlo, a mother of three, including a newborn, is gifted a night nanny by her brother. Hesitant at first, she quickly forms a bond with the thoughtful, surprising, and sometimes challenging nanny named Tully.
37 connections found
View:
37 films that influenced Tully
What critics say influenced Tully
And the band Beulah Belle's open-chord guitar cover of the theme from "You Only Live Twice" is a clue to what's really going on.
“You Only Live Twice,” the James Bond/Nancy Sinatra hit, is not only well performed (by an unknown singer), but has a purposeful meaning for its inclusion.
Ignore one “Knocked Up” sequence, try not to notice how much of what we see is handled in cute montages, smile at the sensitive pop tunes (a cover of the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” is key), try to recall one exchange as funny as this one between the affluent brother and his sister.
She resists, making an oblique reference to the horror film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
This story could have unfolded in many different ways; Marlo’s initial fear is that letting a stranger into her home at night will engender something akin to the trashy thriller The Hand that Rocks the Cradle.
On the surface, this is a cross between Mary Poppins and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, so from the very start there's a sense that there's something wrong about Tully.
What could have been a scary psychodrama (like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle ) or a saucy European comedy (where Tully winds up getting off with one or both parents) instead becomes all about the growing bond between the two women, as they watch crappy reality TV together, discuss Marlo’s non-existent sex life, bop to Cyndi Lauper’s greatest hits, visit a Manhattan club, thrash around to a metal band and truly open up to each other.
Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman (their third collaboration, following Juno and Young Adult) revisit Mary Poppins by way of bleary-eyed Middle America, substituting the idea that life gets better – or love means sacrifice – for a childish fantasy involving the healing powers of a 20-something, Greta Gerwig-type free spirit.
She’s a sort-of hipster Mary Poppins in a crop-top.
Davis has to be Tully’s version of Mary Poppins, an nearly magical entity that attempts to fix the family she’s caring for.
On the surface, this is a cross between Mary Poppins and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, so from the very start there's a sense that there's something wrong about Tully.
Tully is Mary Poppins for the modern age, an unflinchingly realistic examination on the struggles of being a mother, and what giving a life can do to yourself, both physically and mentally.
She imbues Tully with a fresh (albeit one-dimensional) buoyancy that reminded me of the hippie-go-lucky attitude of the young Jessica Lange in King Kong and Tootsie.
Advertisement
There is a subgenre of horror—call it parent paranoia—that takes our natural fears over having children and inflates them into fantastically frightening scenarios (think Rosemary’s Baby or The Babadook).
When Jonah throws a fit in his pregnant mom’s car, screaming and kicking at the back of her seat, the movie gives Marlo’s despair an eerie psycho-thriller vibe, like something out of “The Babadook.”
Her daughter Sarah (Lia Frankland) has reached the age of becoming insecure about herself, and her son Jonah’s (Asher Miles Fallica) undefined special needs (crudely described as “quirky” by his principal), including in-car freak-outs that feel chillingly reminiscent of The Babadook , have forced Marlo to find him a new school.
Watch it as part of a double feature with the similarly themed The Babadook , and you won’t be sure which film is more terrifying.
In its full-blooded commitment, Theron’s turn matches that of Robert De Niro as the self-destructive boxer in Raging Bull .
If the film only addressed those subjects, it would still be a fine example of its form, a smart, rueful Parenthood successor.
Hay un abismo entre esta cinta y, por ejemplo, Parenthood , de Ron Howard.
If I hadn't known better, I'd have been convinced the actress had recently given birth herself, like Tilda Swinton's unabashed postnatal exposure in 1999's "The War Zone."
Advertisement
Ignore one “Knocked Up” sequence, try not to notice how much of what we see is handled in cute montages, smile at the sensitive pop tunes (a cover of the Bond theme “You Only Live Twice” is key), try to recall one exchange as funny as this one between the affluent brother and his sister.
Picture Maria taming the Von Trapp brood in The Sound of Music , or Emma Thompson’s Nanny McPhee magicking an unruly lot of seven children into formation against an evil great-aunt who would separate them.