I have admired Tonya Harding since reading a profile of her in a sports publication around the time of the 1992 Winter Olympic games. In the piece, she explained how she and her mother would walk along the highway looking for bottles to cash in so as to defray the expenses related to her skating career. I remember my sister, also a serious athlete, commenting that she’d have thrown in the towel by that point. Two years later, her reputation and figure skating career were all but destroyed when she became a suspect in the attack against her rival, Nancy Kerrigan.

When I learned about the film I, TONYA, I was hoping for a sensitive window into her story that would finally restore the respect she deserved, and in fits and starts, it is. Many scenes between Harding and her mother, LAVONA FAY GOLDEN, do indeed offer a seriousness and sensitivity lacking in previous media portrayals. In one, a very young Tonya requests a break from skating because she “has to pee.” Her mother denies her insisting, “Don’t tell me what you have to do. I paid for you to skate, you’re gonna stay on the ice and skate.” Young Tonya obediently continues to dazzle on the ice when her mom sees the inevitable stream of urine drip down her daughter’s leg, thus effectively establishing her role as a domineering woman who uses whatever means necessary to get what she wants from her daughter. This bullying later evolves into physical violence when her mother throws a knife at her. The film seems to understand the gravity of these moments and treats Tonya with a sympathy and respect we’ve rarely seen.

Alas, the sensitivity ends there. While touching on various themes in Harding’s life—including poverty, fraught familial relationships, domestic violence, etc.— I, TONYA portrays the skater’s personal struggles in a comedic manner that belittles her misfortunes and foibles. It’s dismaying to see a contemporary film treat domestic violence as a joke. In multiple scenes, Harding’s husband attacks her graphically and repeatedly, and at one point goes so far as to smash her head against a hard surface, leaving her with a black eye, bloodied mouth and bruised face. The film then jumps to a lighthearted scene where the bumbling thugs engage in clownish exploits as they prepare to clobber Nancy Kerrigan with a club. The film lurches between comedy and tragedy with such dizzying abruptness, I failed to find any humor. I, TONYA treats the terror of domestic abuse as just another trashy episode in the life of a poor white woman who was never going to amount to much anyway.

Undoubtedly the film aims for satire rather than intentional malice, but domestic violence, or any type of violence against women, is not appropriate grounds for such levity—especially given that the attack on Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya’s suspected role in it have been treated as a joke from the very beginning. Just after Nancy Kerrigan was brutally assaulted in 1994, the media depicted the story as a catfight between two bitchy figure skaters. By the end of the Lillehammer Olympics, the press destroyed the reputation of both women: Tonya Harding was portrayed as a violent, ill-educated thug, and Nancy Kerrigan was reduced to a spoiled, whiny ingrate.

This media mockery led to endless, mean-spirited sketch comedies including this one on Late Night with David Letterman:

So how come all these years later we must perpetuate this distasteful “joke?” The filmmakers had a chance to show us another side of the story and failed. They also had the opportunity to reveal the dark underbelly of female sports (chronicled beautifully, incidentally, in Joan Ryan’s highly recommended book LITTLE GIRLS IN PRETTY BOXES.) Instead, I, TONYA takes the easy way out and goes for laughs.

Harding’s story is anything but funny.

She did not overcome the overwhelming odds and biases against her by cursing out judges and vicious scheming. She did so by mastering the triple axle and being the first American female figure skater to actually land it in competition. Lamentably, I, TONYA is not the movie to tell that story. In fact, the best part of the film is at the very end when they cut in actual footage of Harding skating at a competition. Amidst all of the mockery, it is easy to forget just how great a skater and competitor she truly was.

Tonya Harding and her legion of fans deserve better. I can only hope that in the future, filmmakers will portray violence perpetrated against women in a more thoughtful way.