At 93 years old, veteran character actress June Squibb finally gets her first real leading role as the title character of Thelma, a jolly light entertainment debut from writer-director Josh Margolin. Inspired by his own grandma, Margolin’s film is a breezy and empathetic look at the spiritual indignities of ageing and how people need to stay useful to feel familiar to themselves, all wrapped up in a more-than-faintly ludicrous action-adventure plot. It’s hardly groundbreaking stuff (it’s a ‘dramedy that premiered at Sundance’ through and through), but for older audiences looking for a fun time without all the stress and noise of a Mission Impossible, it’s sweetly effective.
Thelma is a recent widow, her husband having died two years ago, but for a nonagenarian she’s still remarkably self-sufficient and ‘with it’, mostly getting by on her own, though visited often by her doting adult grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger), who is going through his own feeling-useless crisis, his life having already stalled in his early 20s. Her self-confidence is rocked, though, when she falls for a telephone scam where someone impersonating Daniel asks her to send $10,000 in cash to a PO box, a demand that a slightly panicky Thelma acquiesces to. Already humiliated by the trick and her confusion, Thelma starts to worry that her family will want to send her to assisted living, and so embarks on a quest to get her money back and prove to everyone (but mainly herself), that she’s still in charge of her own life.
Without fail, Thelma is at its best at its quietest. The bond Thelma and Daniel share, bolstered by very warm performances from Squibb and Hechinger, is touching, as is Thelma’s friendship with fellow oldie Ben (the late Richard Roundtree, bringing a real dignity and poise in his last film role), whose motorised scooter becomes integral to the plot. You really buy into Thelma’s world and the people within it, even the just-so-slightly too heightened performances from Parker Posey and Clark Gregg as Daniel’s neurotic parents, which is why the ‘thriller’ stuff generally falls flatter.
Though there are a couple of clever tricks Margolin pulls, using elderly-assistance tech in a low-stakes espionage-y way, a lot of the broader stuff completely breaks the suspension of disbelief and creates a weird tonal shakiness from the more grounded and empathetic stuff elsewhere. ‘Action Granny’ is never a trope I find particularly funny, and while it’s not pushed too far here, there are still a couple of scenes which feel straight out of a dated sitcom. Yet, one must still give huge credit to Squibb for doing most of her own stunts, even if those stunts are just rolling out of a bed and stepping over precariously fallen lamps.
Thelma might dabble in quite a lot of cliches (old people can’t use the computer! who knew?!), but there’s hardly a cynical bone in its body, and this earnestness is ultimately what carries it over the line. Squibb, who herself has not let age slow her down (15 movies and TV shows in the last four years alone, with two more in the pipeline), makes the most of finally being granted the limelight she has deserved for decades, but both she and the film wear this milestone lightly. It’s a fittingly gentle touch for a gentle breeze of a film.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 