THELMA (2024) - Mark Reviews Movies

Thelma, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2024

The premise of Thelma and June Squibb's presence in the film are delightful enough to make it worthwhile. That's all anyone really needs to know, perhaps, about this amusing but honest comedy, but before unintentionally writing off the rest of this review in a matter of two sentences, there is more to writer/director Josh Margolin's feature debut that's worth discussing.

Let's start with Squibb, anyway, because she really is the glue that holds this tonally disparate tale together. She has been acting in film for more than 30 years now, having a breakthrough about a decade ago, and at the age of 94, here she is in what appears to be her first starring role, playing a 93-year-old grandmother who's desperate to hold on to her newfound independence.

That's the heart of this film, which doesn't treat Squibb's Thelma with the gentle, overprotective touch of her grandson, daughter, and son-in-law. It acknowledges that Thelma has physical and mental limitations, given her advanced age and all of the ways the human body and mind keep us from behaving as young as we might feel.

Living alone for the first time in life after being widowed two years prior, Thelma is young at heart, although she might not look like it. One's lack of knowledge of computers or love for cross stitch, after all, doesn't say everything about a person, and Thelma also has an appreciation for Tom Cruise and his ability/willingness to do his own stunts. Seeing the actor's photo in a newspaper serves as the inspiration for Thelma to set off on her own seemingly impossible mission: to retrieve $10,000 from a scammer who duped her into sending him that amount in cash via the mail.

The whole endeavor is framed here as a kind of rebellion for older lady, too. It's against her doting grandson Daniel (Fred Hechinger), who means well because he genuinely loves his grandma and wants to keep her safe. Who wouldn't? Squibb's performance goes a long way to giving Margolin's film an inherent sense of tension. We want Thelma to be safe, too, because she's so sweet, kind, trusting, compassionate, and, from the slow way she moves, in need of some help—probably more than she's willing to admit.

Her reluctance to offer such an admission, though, gets at the other side of Thelma. She is determined and a bit stubborn and, when the opportunity and need arise, full of a drive to still do something with her life on her own terms. Because the character is all of those other things, doesn't she deserve to have a little adventure—or even, in this case, a relatively big one—every now and again? Squibb makes us feel those contradictory things for the character, and the film uses that dual sympathy to its advantage.

As for the premise, it's clever in its design and deceptively simple in its execution. Basically, Thelma gets a call one day from someone claiming to be Daniel. The man on the other end of the line says that he has been in a car accident, has been arrested, and needs money to pay for an attorney, who also calls Thelma. Certain her grandson is hurt and scared and in need of legal aid, she gathers up the cash from assorted hiding spots around her house and takes a cab to the post office.

As it turns out, Daniel is fine. The calls were a scheme, and now, Thelma's daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg) are having a serious conversation about sending Thelma to an assisted-living facility. To prove—if only to herself—that she's still capable, Thelma walks all the way to post office, finds the address where she mailed the money, and comes up with her own scheme to locate the swindlers and get back her cash.

In some ways, Margolin presents this setup as a parody of action movies, featuring low-speed chases on motorized scooters, daring stunts like Thelma rolling across and trying to balance herself on a bed, and a slow-motion race against the clock. After all, Thelma has to be finished by the late evening, because Ben (the late Richard Roundtree, in a lovely send-off performance), her partner in this mission who provides—but doesn't want to lose sight of—the scooter, is acting in a play at the retirement home where he now lives.

Such setpieces are amusing, albeit a bit shallow. Funnier is when the juxtaposition is more direct and focused than broad parody, such as when Thelma is almost caught by her family because she stops to find out if she knows a stranger around her age (This happens a few times and is genuinely funny each one, as if there's a secret language or custom of older people). It's also cunning how Thelma and Ben use their modern hearing aids as secret communication devices, and the payoff to the fear of being alone and falling makes for a genuinely harrowing moment.

As a comedy, the film is more or less successful in its genre-tinkering (less so) and its character work (more so). It sneakily works better still, though, as a light-on-its-feet but frank depiction of life in advanced years, how age really is only a number in certain ways, and how the impulse to coddle and shield older people is understandable but can be taken too far. Thelma is somewhat rough in its comedic ends, then, but it's impossible to ignore how charming and touching the film is beneath them, thanks, in significant part, to Squibb.

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