Thelma (2024) - Review: This Ain't Your Grandma's Grandma

 

There’s something really delightful about getting to see older, experienced performers get to “act their age” so to speak. In an industry constantly chasing after the new, hip, young thing, seeing an aged film star come back to lead a film or to a role they played when they were younger is always a good feeling. Doubly so when that actor gets to lead a film that could only exist for someone their age, as is the case here with the delightful little tale of “Thelma.” 

The film follows the titular elderly woman, played with spirit by June Squibb (“Nebraska,” “About Schmidt”), who sends her family into a tizzy after she falls for a phone scam that results in her sending ten thousand dollars to a random address, believing her grandson Danny, played by Fred Hechinger (“Eighth Grade,” “News of the World”), is in jail. After she learns how worried they are that this trick is a result of her mind deteriorating, she enlists in the help of her fellow elderly friend Ben, played by Richard Roundtree (“Shaft (1971),” “Being Mary Jane”), to track down the scammers and get her money back. 

If there’s one surefire thing from both the premise and the actress cast in its lead, “Thelma” is certainly going to let Squibb have an absolute blast. It’s a good thing that writer/director/editor Josh Margolin (“Deep Murder”) is content to let her run as wild as her orthopedic sneakers can let her in the film’s brisk 98-minute runtime. Squibb has always been a source of laughs and glee, wisely aware of her age and the expectations surrounding it. She embraces the role with vigor and delight, taking on the material with the confidence and security of an action star to make it all sing. 

Roundtree plays a perfect straight man to her shenanigans, and it ends up being a fantastically charming and subdued posthumous performance for the legendary actor to go out on. Hechinger is also great as Danny, a hodge-podge of various arrested development youth tropes, but when he and Squibb are on screen together, they shine. The rest of the cast are also great, although they’re simply damned with less screentime. Clark Gregg (“The Avengers,” “The West Wing”) and Parker Posey (“Dazed and Confused,” “Josie and the Pussycats (2001)”) are great as Thelma’s daughter and son-in-law/Danny’s parents Alan and Gail, respectively, and there’s a great little role from Malcolm McDowell (“A Clockwork Orange,” “Mozart in the Jungle”) here as well. But Gregg and Posey simply don’t get much to do apart from show up and be charming, which they succeed at, and McDowell’s role might as well be a cameo, as fantastic as he still manages to be with that limited time. 

It’s a quaint little movie in most aspects outside of the cast. While they get a lot of mileage out of Los Angeles and it is all shockingly well shot by cinematographer David Bolen (“Some Kind of Heaven”), there is a very simple sense of vision to it all. This isn’t a bad thing, as it clearly exists as a showcase for an actress like Squibb; it ends up feeling like a movie that could’ve been shot in a week around the city by a bunch of actors simply looking to have a good time. The score from Nick Chuba (“Dr. Death”) is remarkably excellent, standing out from the rest of the production's aspects thanks to a mixture of simple strings and quieter melodies and riffs on the typical “spy/espionage” movie theme sounds. 

Within those simpler elements, and bolstered by Bolen’s cinematography, is a movie that has a shocking number of layers to it. For a silly movie about an elderly woman looking to get her money back, there’s a lot to be said about how we treat the elderly and how we can over-care for those we love. It isn't getting into things with the depth that a two-hour drama might, but the handful of moments where we simply sit, wordlessly with Thelma and the rest of the characters are both gorgeous and remarkably profound. 

“Thelma” has everything you could want in a movie! Elderly hijinks, revenge on scammers who take advantage of those who don’t know better, June Squibb, electric scooter chases! It's the kind of good ol’ fashioned fun time at the movies that can often be forgotten about or taken for granted nowadays, much like it’s elderly lead, with just enough to think about under the surface. With Squibb at the helm, it’s a movie that practically dares you not to have a good time 4.5/5