Call Your Grandmother
First-timer Josh Margolin’s ode to his granny has some prime olds gags, but it’s also a gentle slap for the rest of us.
Thelma
Director: Josh Margolin • Writer: Josh Margolin
Starring: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
USA • 1hr 39mins
Opens Hong Kong Aug 15 • IIA
Grade: B
Thelma is a very nice movie. I’m not trying to sound glib or bitchy or dismissive – you’d know it if I were – but that’s honestly the best descriptor for writer-director-editor Josh Margolin’s (in his first feature) vaguely stranger-than-fiction action-comedy, allegedly based on the adventures of his own grandmother. Thelma is a gentle, workmanlike dramedy that will make most of us think about our own ageing parents or grandparents and their brilliant non-sequiturs and randomisms, such as my grandmother’s fondness for Will Smith’s break-out sitcom, The French Prince of Bel-Air. The less said about her confluence of brewing giants Molson and Labatt the better. In some cases the elderlies’ penchant for unwitting hilarity is the kind of low-hanging fruit that makes for insulting or simply lazy comedy, but Margolin goes out of his way to lace Thelma with melancholy observations about ageing and the need to be needed and delicate spankings for those of us who would brush off our olds so quickly. If you’re looking for the second coming of Harold and Maude, this isn’t it, but there are worse ways to spend 90-odd minutes.
Bad mofos
It’s not outrageous to think of Thelma as a more self-determinatory, far less bloody variation on The Beekeeper, in which an elderly gets scammed out of their money and justice comes knocking at the scammers’ door. This time around, though, justice is on a battery-powered scooter. Thelma (veteran June Squibb, having a moment and possibly 2024’s Gloria Stuart) is an only partially spry 93-year-old, widowed about two years earlier but still living in the home she made with her dear departed husband. A regular visitor is her doting if totally aimless grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger, The White Lotus, the forthcoming Gladiator II), who has both girlfriend and career troubles. Still, he finds time for Thelma and is her staunchest ally when it comes to her happiness and a modicum of independence. Their bond is one of the two emotional tracks Thelma rides, particularly in the days after Thelma gets scammed out of $10,000. Her daughter Gail (indie queen Parker Posey) and Gail’s husband Alan (MCU mainstay Clark Gregg, Agent Colson ) think it’s time to consider selling the house and putting Thelma in a senior’s home, with only Daniel pushing back on that idea. To prove she’s perfectly able to take care of herself, Thelma hooks up with her old friend Ben (OG Shaft, the great Richard Roundtree in his last performance), commandeers his scooter and takes off for the shady side of Los Angeles to get her money back from Harvey (Malcolm McDowell), a geriatric scumbag with his own problems. Cue the hearing aid jokes and hip replacement gags on the second emotional track.
Like I said, there are plenty of goofy jokes about old folks and their inability to navigate email, all their friends being dead, nursing home activities and residents, and generally how they tend to dodder all over the place, but Margolin isn’t mean-spirited – we’re all heading there after all – and the humour is the counterbalance to the film’s more tragic elements. Notably, the tragedy isn’t in how old Thelma is and how hard it is for she and Ben to get around. The tragedy is in the way people like Thelma get scammed because their solitude makes them want to be wanted. The tragedy is in nonagenarian Thelma’s unwillingness to accept what Ben already has: that, yeah, he needs help these days. The tragedy is that Thelma has never had a true taste of freedom. The tragedy is how seniors are relegated to the proverbial dust bin to rot, alone, like Thelma and Ben’s friend Mona (Bunny Levine), in the movie’s single saddest sequence. Thelma’s not tragic; everyone around her is.
But Thelma is a comedy more than a drama, with a happy ending (that’s not a spoiler) that comes with the message that living doesn’t stop at 65, a message deftly delivered by Squibb’s agile performance and naturalistic, lived-in dynamic with both Roundtree and Hechinger – who has the good sense to step back and let Squibb hog the spotlight in their scenes together. The connection between Thelma and Daniel is endearing, even if the connection between his aimlessness and hers is a reach. Nonetheless the point is taken. There’s a running Tom Cruise joke in Thelma. You think he has any intention of laying down to die at 65? Top Gun 4 will just be starting production. — DEK