THELMA ***
Josh Margolin2024
IDEA: Unable to secure the help of the authorities after she's robbed by a phone scammer, an elderly woman takes justice into her own hands and sets out to get her money back.
BLURB: It’s not all the time you see a smart mainstream American comedy that centers an elderly person, and rarer still that she’s a 93-year-old grandma and vigilante action hero. Thelma is not only a welcome corrective to lazy, belittling, and mocking portrayals of seniors on screen, but a clever, funny, and moving portrait of late-life infirmities and triumphs alike. A gift for the nonagenarian June Squibb, her role allows her to feast on acerbic line deliveries, pathos, and even physical comedy in ways she hasn’t quite been able to before. Margolin’s script is remarkable for how slyly it toes the clichés without falling into them; while he’s playing with some of the expected tropes about older people - technological incompetence, memory issues - they are never designed to ridicule, nor are they shown to necessarily be age-specific or liabilities at all. Through Margolin’s proxy, the grandson Danny, Thelma conveys how struggles with personal independence and day-to-day life skills transcend age, and can in fact unite the unformed young with their senescent elders. The film balances such sentimental intergenerational commentary with a boisterous sense of genre fun, utilizing noir tropes in a rollicking adventure that proves one doesn’t have to take their senior years lying down (something Squibb proves by example)! Get yourself a grandchild who creates a love letter to you like this.
