SPOILERS FOR "TULLY"
Seriously, this movie has quite the plot twist and so I'm going to type a couple of run-on sentences in here, just in case you absent-mindedly kept reading past the SPOILER ALERT or somehow have the notion that maybe you can stop reading before it gets too spoilery. No. I am going to really really spoil this movie if I even obliquely allude to the plot twist in the final reel. OK, then.
The movie started out for me as a fairly standard indie dramedy with some fairly standard off-the-shelf parts about modern family life, and middle-aged motherhood, and the amusing rigors of affluent suburban life. I probably would have bailed, if not for a strong cast - Charlize Theron, Mark Duplass, Rob Livingston and a new-ish face, Mackenzie Davis, who plays the "night nanny" that Theron's wealthy brother hires for her as a support system for a middle-aged mom with a newborn and a couple of kids already (one of them is "quirky," which is apparently the term that everyone in the movie settles on for the autistic/Asperger's boy).
But then the nanny offers an extra service that seems quite above and beyond the call of duty - and which you wouldn't expect to see in her CV. The scene is a bit surreal, but the film presents it a way that dulls the edges of implausbility enough to keep you thinking it's real and maybe this is something that's even a trend in some part of the country you don't live in.
From this point on, the movie had me well-hooked. And, looking back, I don't quite understand how I didn't see the Big Reveal coming at the end. Plenty of bread crumbs were dropped for me. I usually can smell this particular twist coming a mile away. I can imagine real pleasure in watching again, knowing the true status of Tully the nanny, and considering the clever allegorical story that it all becomes when you understand that status.
Grade: A (in spite of my general aversion to films that focus too often on the details of lactation and breast pumps)
