Review: 'Eyes of Tammy Faye' is a shallow look at the televangelist, but Jessica Chastain finds layers in her portrayal.

In the movies, as in life, the icon known to the world as Tammy Faye Bakker has been done wrong by the men who claim to have her best interests at heart.

This time, it wasn’t her caddish husband, televangelist Jim Bakker, who exploited her open nature to pry open viewers’ wallets. No, this time the culprit is director Michael Showalter (“The Big Sick,” “The Lovebirds”), who never gets more than mascara-deep in telling Tammy Faye’s story.

Spanning more than four decades of her life, the movie starts with young Tammy Faye Grover (Chandler Head) being drawn to the Assemblies of God church where her stern mother, Rachel (Cherry Jones), plays piano during services. But Mom has banned Tammy from the church, because she’s the daughter of Rachel’s first husband, and an unfortunate reminder of Rachel’s divorce. Still, Tammy talks to God — something she does throughout the story — and does what she thinks God wants her to do.

Cut to 1960, when Tammy (played from here on out by Jessica Chastain) attends bible college and meets the charming Bakker (Andrew Garfield), who preaches a “prosperity gospel,” using selective bible verses to argue that God wants people to get rich — and to give generously to their church to make that happen. Tammy and Jim are quickly married, to Rachel’s horror, and hit the road as traveling preachers, with Jim delivering sermons and Tammy Faye singing and performing puppet shows for the children in the crowds.

Within a few years, the Bakkers join up with Pat Robertson (Gabriel Olds) and his fledgling Christian Broadcasting Network. It’s not long before Jim and Tammy Faye are the network’s stars, with Jim launching his brainchild: A nighttime talk show, which he pitches as “Johnny Carson for Christians,” called “The 700 Club.” 

When Tammy Faye sees how well the Robertsons live, off the wealth the Bankers’ hard work has created, the Bakkers strike out on their own, forming the PTL (“Praise the Lord”) network. Keeping that empire afloat takes a lot of donations, and a lot of debt — and the strain drives a wedge between Jim and Tammy Faye.

Everything depicted here will be familiar to anyone who saw Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s  2000 documentary, also called “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” which is credited as inspiration for the script by Abe Sylvia (a TV writer making his feature debut). That documentary leaned into Tammy Faye’s camp value — it featured puppets similar to hers, and enlisted RuPaul as the narrator. (Seeing RuPaul and Tammy Faye walking the streets of Park City the year the movie debuted at Sundance was a surreal delight.)

The movie delves into Tammy Faye’s weaknesses — her pill-popping and a brief instance of infidelity, both of which Jim holds over her head, while also using Tammy Faye’s tearful confessions as money-raising ploys for PTL. It also shows moments when Tammy Faye’s generous spirit ran counter to Christian doctrine, such as when she did a sympathetic interview with a gay man with AIDS, or when she opined to Rev. Jerry Falwell (Vincent D’Onofrio) that evangelicals should stay out of politics. (The movie depicts Falwell as a humorless scold and, when the Bakkers’ empire collapses, a duplicitous backstabber — and I am here for all of it.)

Everything looks note-perfect, from the period details of Tammy Faye’s childhood to the garish soundstage where Jim and Tammy Faye broadcast PTL to millions of viewers. And certainly the cast — namely Chastain, Garfield and D’Onofrio — look like the people they’re portraying.

But there’s a hollowness to the narrative, as if Showalter and Sylvia saw the ‘90s comedians mocking Tammy Faye for her over-the-top make-up and chipmunk voice — shown here in a montage that will make you cringe today — and decided they weren’t going to explore past that surface.

Only Chastain, in a tour de force performance, gets past the make-up and mannerisms to plunge into the soul of this unfairly maligned woman. Chastain seems to understand that Tammy Faye’s secret was in how the pancake make-up and permanent eyeliner were her armor, constructed in response to her mother’s condemnation and Jim’s manipulations — and that while Tammy Faye’s look was fake, her compassion and her Christian heart were the real thing.

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‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 17, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and drug abuse. Running time: 126 minutes.