The Eyes of Tammy Faye

..and Tammy Faye through ours. Saw this tonight and it was so deliciously campy and downright funny ! TF is an accidental hoot most of the time as she takes herself so seriously and it is impossible for the audience to do so. I mean anyone who looks at the camera with 2 inches of industrial strength make-up on and says in all seriousness that she likes things real and natural is an unintentional standup comic. Did not like the gimmicky hand-puppets intro to each segment of the Jim and TF sorry saga. Liked how this gutsy, never say fail woman comes across, there's a naivete and sadness to her tackiness coupled with her real devotion to the lord. You just have to like her by movie's end.

First, I'm not religious and I always thought Jim and Tammy Faye were pathetic scam artists.

I knew, of course, about the scandals involving them and their ministry. What I did not know, and what this film chronicles, is how the Bakkers invented televangelism with not one but three different networks, each of which was stolen from them by other televangelists. Jerry Falwell comes across exactly as the kind of person I have always suspected him to be: a schemer, a traitor, and a con man.

Jim Bakker may not fare much better in the film's view (though Tammy still defends him). It is Tammy Faye herself who is the revelation, though. I did not know of her true compassion for groups that Christian ministries still vilify today (AIDS victims, gays, the poor, etc.).

I never expected to find myself actually sympathizing with, and even liking, the fun-loving, vulnerable Tammy Faye. This is not some propaganda film, but a warts and all profile by respected filmmakers. The narrator is famed drag queen RuPaul Charles, which underscores just how surprising this film is.

I'm not saying I'd like to hear Tammy Faye sing, but after watching this engaging film, I wouldn't mind living next door to her.

This film opens with RuPaul Charles asking, `Whatever happened to Tammy Faye?'

Over the next hour and nineteen minutes you find out her past and present but the future is left a blank.

Almost the first words out of her mouth is her reciting some bad poetry – her own.

You also learn she buys her makeup at swap meets!

As she says, `Puppets started it all.' And the theme is carried out through the entire film with puppets introducing each segment.

She married Jim Bakker, appropriately enough, on April Fool's Day. This becomes eerily omniscient as this incredible documentary unfolds.

You will learn a lot about the life and times of Tammy Faye's existence in the `Electric Church' a term she uses herself to describe the televised evangelical preaching of her and her husband and how they were squeezed out of every project they started together; that April Fool's curse again.

I believe this film really tries to give a balanced perspective on her trials and tribulations – but you walk out of the theater with a certain amount of sympathy for all she has gone through and her ability to survive if not exactly flourish.

Her very ‘un-Christian' views about gay people show an amazing amount of personal integrity and strength. While it may seem that she is shallow and lives on the surface it becomes obvious that she has an inner core of faith and belief in what is right that runs deep through the center of her being.

It is obvious towards the end of the film she must have a great deal of personal magnetism that, in spite of her ever-tearful visage, must carry most strongly when you meet her in person.

The interviews with her multi-pierced son and the daughter who ran away from home when the scandals erupted are particularly poignant.

This documentary has Oscar nomination written all over it and it is well worth both your time and money to see it.

This "Eyes of Tammy Faye" bio-documentary (from 1999) actually turned out to be a whole lot better than I had initially thought it would be.

The one thing that impressed me the most about this presentation was that is producers/directors, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato did not shy away from clearly exposing all of the eye-opening "behind-the-scenes" fraudulence, corruption, and vicious back-stabbing that existed back then in the "holier-than-thou" realm of TV Evangelism.

Anyway - This documentary's star interviewee, Tammy Faye Messner died of cancer (in 2007) at the age of sixty-five.

I had no idea what to expect from this documentary about the life of the recently deceased Tammy Faye Bakker/Messner. Back in the '80's my wife was a fan of the Bakker's; I never was. I never cared for their glitzy, showy style of ministry and I never cared for the constant appeals for money, money and more money or the theology that seemed to say that if you didn't have a lot there was something wrong with you. Having said that, I can't deny that their ministry had a positive effect on many people even though I was largely revolted by it. So, I watched this out of curiosity. Tammy Faye is, after all, a fascinating person; one who has stepped out of what would normally be thought of as the traditional "fundamentalist" circles to embrace a variety of people as personal friends, from homosexuals to porn stars while still identifying herself very much as an evangelical Christian. For that, she deserves applause.

Narrated by drag queen RuPaul Charles (which says something about the esteem in which Tammy Faye is held in circles not normally friendly with evangelical Christianity), the documentary is very friendly to Tammy Faye, and it certainly exposes the sordid side of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-powerful Christian broadcasting community. (I don't like to speak ill of the dead, but Jerry Falwell - who I also never liked a bit - comes across here as a mean-spirited, power-hungry hypocrite, and that's being kind as well as probably true!) The first half of the documentary deals with the rise of Jim & Tammy's PTL Ministry and the problems that caused for them even while it was becoming a huge success. Speaking as a pastor, I must confess to a certain amount of sympathy for the televangelists. No one goes into ministry expecting to become rich and powerful, and when that happens to a very few, those very few probably get more easily overwhelmed by it and caught up in it than those who've planned for wealth and power all their lives, simply because it's so unexpected and they're so unprepared for it. The documentary certainly shows that trap overcoming Jim Bakker (and, to a lesser degree - perhaps because it's filmed from her perspective - Tammy Faye.) I found the PTL story both fascinating and tragic. The second half of the movie documents Tammy Faye's life post-PTL. It's an impressive story of a woman learning to stand on her own and overcoming some pretty big odds to do it. The story only goes as far as her second husband Roe Messner's release from prison after serving two years for bankruptcy fraud, so there's nothing about her spin on "The Surreal Life" or her final days before her cancer finally took her life.

Tammy Faye was a fascinating person. Even those who weren't fans of hers can enjoy and appreciate this film. I know that because I wasn't a fan and I did enjoy this. The only truly irritating part was the puppets who introduced each segment! Losing a mark also for being obviously biased, I still give this an 8/10.