The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Directed by Michael Showalter, The Eyes of Tammy Faye details the relationship between Jim (Andrew Garfield) and Tammy Faye Bakker (Jessica Chastain) and their eventual rise (and fall) within the world of televangelism. Filmmaker Showalter, armed with Abe Sylvia’s screenplay, delivers an almost comically by-the-book biopic that contains some of the genre’s hoariest conventions and tropes (eg Tammy Faye has to think about her whole life before she sits down for an interview), and yet there’s little doubt that the movie generally remains watchable enough for the duration of its (admittedly overlong) running time – with Chastain and Garfield’s top-tier work proving instrumental in sustaining one’s attention through the narrative’s less-than-enthralling stretches. (There are portions of the midsection, for example, wherein nothing of much interest seems to occur.) And while the picture, not surprisingly, doesn’t contain much in the way of unexpected plot twists or detours, The Eyes of Tammy Faye builds towards an effective (and affecting) climax that boasts an absolute showstopper of a final performance by Chastain’s completely sympathetic protagonist – which ultimately cements the film’s place as a decent drama that would hardly be worth mentioning were it not for its stars’ first-class efforts.

*** out of ****