Pass the Loot

 

THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (B+) (2021) - My mom was worried. She'd be in the kitchen preparing dinner. I was done with college classes for the day. During the 5 o'clock hour on weekdays, I liked to park it on the couch and tune in to Channel 38 to watch the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

I was fascinated. The Bakkers were ahead of their time in shrugging off the staid formalities of religious TV pitches and emulating mainstream talk shows, through plain talk and secular braggadocio. At the time, in the early to mid-'80s, they were raking in donations to fund a massive theme park, Heritage USA, that seemed to be perpetually under construction and expansion. My favorite shows featured Jim in a hard-hat reporting from the construction site back to Tammy Faye and lovable sidekick Uncle Henry in the studio. 

You couldn't help sense that this was a massive fraud being perpetrated, but the couple were so damned cheerful and confident that you might think that, hey, maybe they really are doing the lord's work, just in their own mysterious ways. Of course, it turned out to be an infernal scam, and the Bakkers could not refute the dogged reporting in the Charlotte Observer that they were charlatans enriching themselves at an ungodly rate while selling worthless time shares to their gullible flock.

Their daily show played out like a soap opera. Jim and Tammy's hubris was unmatched. They played by Gordon Gecko's rules of the day -- greed is good -- while they preached the "prosperity gospel." They were so brash that you almost wanted to cheer them on to get away with it. Damn the suckers who sent them money. When the Bakkers' world came crashing down -- in swirls of graft, sexual affairs, blackmail and rivalry with arch-nemesis Jerry Falwell -- it was all more entertaining than "Dallas" or "Dynasty." I still have a folder of yellowed newspaper clippings from Jim Bakker's trial, which included his infamous nervous breakdown in which he thought the people in the courtroom were animals out to attack him. Wild.

Jessica Chastain was only a kid when this went down, but she has a profound appreciation for the history. She is a producer and the star of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," a dramatic follow-up to the 2000 documentary about the makeup-prone anti-hero who died in 2007. (Jim Bakker, after a prison stint, has returned to TV now preaching the end-of-days gospel. Is he worried that he can't take it with him?) Chastain devotes every ounce of her energy to this breezy biopic that never lets up over a two-hour running time.

Chastain teams up with talented director Michael Showalter ("Hello, My Name Is Doris," TV's "Search Party") and TV writer Abe Sylvia to create a believable re-creation of the phenomenon that was the PTL Club. (At the time, Chicago Tribune critic Gary Deeb, and I'm sure others, referred to it as the Pass the Loot Club instead of Praise the Lord.) Andrew Garfield, who can be hit-and-miss as a dramatic actor, absolutely nails the smarm and massive insecurities -- not to mention the whiny speech patterns -- of Jim Bakker. 

The film is rooted in Tammy Faye's backstory, starting with her upbringing in Minnesota by a divorced woman and her second husband. Her mom (a buttoned up Cherry Jones from "Transparent") will be the conscience for her daughter throughout the movie, even while sharing in the eventual largesse. Tammy has a meet-cute with young Jim at divinity school and will join him as they climb the ladder through Pat Robertson's fledgling ministry in the 1960s, in large part due to Tammy's singing and puppetry and Jim's media savviness. By the mid-'70s, the dynamic duo has branched out on their own.

Showalter, after spending a good hour with valuable table-setting, dives into the slimy world of Reagan-era televangelism and its indecent greed and graft. He gives Chastain a long leash to play Tammy Faye to the hilt, and as broad as she gets at times, it's virtually impossible to overplay what was in real life essentially a cartoon character. Over time, the makeup slathers on thicker and the age lines deepen, but even intense close-ups fail to betray any artifice. (There are 19 people credited to the film's Makeup department.) Chastain is all in, a true force of nature, and nothing can stop her from entertaining you. When another man finally shows her genuine sexual attraction, you melt with her. And she and Garfield nail those flat, nasally heartland voices so well that it's eerie. I have a soft ban on biopics involving news events and newsmakers that I followed closely, but this is a rare exception, one that rises above mere mimicry and period fetishism and instead creates a compelling narrative to get lost in.

At times, Showalter's strenuous attempt to be faithful to the record can get in the way of just telling a story. The timeline can be a bit choppy at times. Vincent D'Onofrio is a little too enamored with the vocal quirks of his Falwell depiction. And the handling of the Jessica Hahn scandal (the secretary is unseen here) feels rushed. But "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" is an old-fashioned throwback to those movies with meat on their bones that were not afraid to emote to the cheap seats. 

I eventually outgrew my infatuation with televangelists like the Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggert and the underappreciated "healer" Rev. Ernest Angley (who died this year at age 99). Now my mom is back to just being disappointed that I'm an atheist. The downfall of Jim and Tammy Faye was epic and well earned. But the entertainment value curdled. With the benefit of the passage of time and some dramatic license, Chastain and company bring back both the bravado and the pathos.