Ben Falcone builds broad comedies around Melissa McCarthy and wants us to care about the people she plays. We respect the affection; in Tammy, his loose storytelling leaves her doing too much of the work.
Fi1m perspective
In Tammy (2014), Melissa McCarthy is asked to be outrageous, then vulnerable, with too little connecting the two. Ben Falcone gives her room for both, but does not make the change convincing. His feature debut, which they wrote together, sets out to find laughs in a difficult person without dismissing her. We find the direction too slack to make that reasonable ambition count, and the laughs too scarce to excuse the slackness.
McCarthy's warmth and Susan Sarandon's mischief make the film less punishing than that verdict might suggest. We were frustrated by Tammy, because McCarthy kept giving us reasons to care while the screenplay kept changing how it wanted us to regard her. The problem is not simply the shortage of jokes. Falcone lets the broad comedy and the quieter scenes sit apart, so sympathy has to be rebuilt rather than allowed to grow.
The subsequent films keep McCarthy at the centre while changing the kind of comedy around her. The Boss (2016) is a redemption comedy, while Life of the Party (2018) moves into a college setting. Superintelligence (2020) takes up an artificial-intelligence premise, and Thunder Force (2021) tries superhero parody. These are different settings for a continuing interest in giving McCarthy a film to lead.
Falcone encourages improvisation and films multiple versions of scenes to explore different jokes. It is a sympathetic way to work with comic actors, though the finished film still needs firm choices. It also leaves the director with the less agreeable business of choosing what to keep, what to cut and how one scene leads into the next. Tammy needed more of that discipline: its affection for the character is clear, but the abrupt changes of tone keep making her harder to follow. For another collaboration, we would welcome a tighter script that gives McCarthy a more consistent character to play.
Biography
Ben Falcone (born Benjamin Scott Falcone, 25 August 1973) is an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and trained with the Groundlings improv troupe in Los Angeles.
Falcone is married to actress Melissa McCarthy, with whom he has frequently collaborated since meeting in the late 1990s. He has appeared in cameo roles in several of her films, including Bridesmaids (2011), The Heat (2013), Spy (2015) and Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), in which he played Alan Schmidt.
He made his directorial debut with Tammy (2014), which he co-wrote with McCarthy, and has since directed, co-written and produced The Boss (2016), Life of the Party (2018), Superintelligence (2020) and Thunder Force (2021), all starring McCarthy. In 2022 he created and starred in the Netflix series God's Favorite Idiot.
