I realise this film has been out for a while, so recognise I am a bit late to the party, but managed to watch Tully on the plane flying to NY.
I’d been told by friends I MUST see it and I could relate to the overload of a new mum. Watching the film I did wonder if I was meant to relate as I worked in HR, or I was exhausted when I had a new baby or I managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other even when it was super tough. That for me is where the similarities end!
This is a woman who is broken, managing a kid with special needs and on her knees with the arrival of a new baby. None of this is abnormal, the screaming baby, the breast feeding, the exhaustion, and as for having a night nanny, I applaud her completely. I have done it with and without a bit of night help in the early days and totally support all help you can get in the early days.
But what I did find VERY weird was the night nanny. A night nanny who rocks up and sits by your bed in the night, drinks sangria with you and encourages you to go out on the lash, suggesting your husband wont notice, is to me a lunatic. I totally lost interest in the film when the night nanny started behaving like some kind of obsessive friend to the mother.
Charlize Theron, (the mother) gives an exceptional performance but that’s the highlight of the film for me. It’s not funny, I don’t get it and ALL the amusing bits (they are few) are in the trailer. So if you want to see the bits that will make you laugh, just watch that. And it’ll take 3 mins instead of 2 hours which for us time poor WoMos is a winner.
Before I close off, I want to question a line in the film that got me thinking. At one point the mother says to said night nanny ‘Girls don’t heal. We might look like we heal but we don’t. We are covered in concealer’. Best bit of the script.