12 Awesome 2014 Performances In Otherwise Awful Movies

3. Susan Sarandon - Tammy

The Movie: Melissa McCarthy once again plays a flagrantly obnoxious, gaudy woman audiences are supposed to warm to...but the law of diminished returns was fully in effect for Tammy. Her character never really pulls the required 180 for viewers to like her, and on the whole the movie just doesn't try hard enough. If you like watching a fat person fall over ad nauseum, however, you'll have a blast. The Performance: Susan Sarandon is as reliably game as ever in Tammy, playing the title character's cantankerous grandmother Pearl, as the pair head off together on a crazy road trip. While the shenanigans the two get up to aren't particularly funny, Sarandon is, while kitted out in prosthetic "cankles" and grey hair, totally convincing as a mentally frazzled, alcoholic old lady. She's a strong counter-point to McCarthy's relatively uninspired and frankly unlikeable shtick, and just about prevents the entire movie from being an unmitigated disaster, bad though it still is. While Tammy's redemption just doesn't work, Pearl is a more affable presence, and it's all thanks to Sarandon that the character functions at all.