'The Eyes of Tammy Faye' review: Uneven biopic of 1980s televangelist

Tammy Faye Bakker can’t remove her eyelashes in Michael Showalter’s biopic "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." Just like her lipliner, she informs a befuddled makeup artist, the lashes are permanent. "This is who I am," Tammy says.

It’s an effective if on-the-nose opening for a movie that aims to resuscitate the reputation of Tammy Faye Bakker, a 1980s-era televangelist who with her husband, Jim Bakker, built a fortune with "The PTL Club," a perpetual fundraising show that preached a gospel of prosperity (irony not included). When their business disintegrated following a sex scandal and fraud charges that landed Jim in prison, it was Tammy Faye — with her inch-thick makeup and constantly weeping eyes — who became the tabloid face of religious hypocrisy. Forgotten amid the avalanche of headlines was Tammy’s public embrace of the gay community during the AIDS epidemic, then unheard-of among televangelists. She died in 2007.

Based on a documentary from 2000, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" is primarily a vehicle for Jessica Chastain, its star and producer. The story allows Chastain to cover all the acting bases: young Tammy as a Bible college student, peak-period Tammy in extravagant fur coats, late-period Tammy wearing increasingly disturbing makeup. Andrew Garfield, as Jim Bakker — he of the cornpone smile and Ken doll comb-over — keeps pace alongside her.

Director Showalter, best known for comedies ("The Big Sick"), alternates between mocking the Bakkers — Christian sex is played for laughs here — and taking them seriously as people. Despite the occasional cartoonish note, Chastain’s Tammy cuts a sympathetic figure as a woman blindsided by life but determined to move forward, while Garfield plays Jim as a man driven by both God-sanctioned arrogance and deep insecurity. The supporting cast, a mixed bag, includes a chilly Cherry Jones as Tammy’s disapproving mother and an overly blustery Vincent D’Onofrio as the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

"The Eyes of Tammy Faye" often feels superficial. It relies too heavily on calendar-page montages to tell its story; there are at least four, which is three too many. Factual financial details of the Bakker empire are hard to come by. Rumors of Jim’s homosexuality resurface here in a way that feels unfair.

The movie makes a strong case for its Tammy Faye (and may earn Chastain an award or two), but some viewers may have qualms. Tammy Faye’s big-tent humanism was admirable — her televised interview with a gay pastor is one of the film’s highlights — but she also used the carrot of salvation and the stick of damnation to coax millions of dollars from gullible Christians. Those suckers never got an even break from the Bakkers; whether Tammy Faye deserves one herself is debatable.