Perceptions permeate the life of Marlo. Random women in the coffeeshop interrupt her coffee order to tell her that decaf has trace amounts of caffeine, which can harm the baby she’s carrying. Principals and family alike wonder how she’ll manage to help her son with his social problems.
It weighs heavy on her shoulders when she knows she can’t be the kind of mom who bakes cupcakes and does anything else because she’s barely holding it together — that is, until Tully gets there.
The movie mines the generous well of comedy that is the inherent judgement laden in every conversation around parenting, to great success. It’s there when you feel the hushed glances your way as your kid throws a fit, and it’s there in the “adult dinners” you have when your sister-in-law says she also remembers uncomfortable during the last stretch of pregnancy: “I could barely make it to the gym.”
“Tully” makes its point clear: Motherhood is surviving. It’s doing what you have to do, and then doing it all over again.
But from there that “Tully” veers into the gray area. As soon as Tully shows up on the front door of Marlo, the movie slows like a kayak gently gliding over the water. The scenes of Tully and Marlo during their nighttime escapades are unmoored from time or reality; they feel earnest and empowering, which is exactly how Marlo responds to it.
“Tully” veers again, later on, as it continues to mine the relationship between the two women, in a way that re-colors everything that came before it. But the whole film still needs to be rooted in that connection, something that the film pulls off with aplomb. Writer Diablo Cody (of “Juno” and “Young Adult” fame) imbues the two with an openness that feels true to that of two women in a position to help one another.
Mackenzie Davis, rocking almost the exact same outfit as she did during her time on “Halt and Catch Fire,” shows her range by exuding a genuine and infectious happiness. It’s more than enough to draw Charlize Theron’s Marlo out of her shell, giving Theron more time to flex an already layered performance.
They make their connection look easy, which helps thing simmer down where they once threatened to (or full on did) boil over. The daunting exhaustion of the first act is punctured by outbursts that director Jason Reitman (also of “Juno” fame, along with “Up in the Air” and “Thank You For Smoking”) smartly frames as an everyday onslaught of slights and differences in framing: At a meeting with a principal while nine months pregnant Marlo pats her stomach in a utterly routine kind of way. “Such a blessing,” she wryly tells the principal.
And so “Tully” ends on a slightly ambivalent note; it’s somewhere between the romanticized mothering of the opening credits and the montage of life with a newborn where weeks blur together and just changing clothes seems insurmountable. Weirdness happens, the movie seems to say, that’s motherhood.