Thelma: A Geriatric Mission Impossible and a Total Crowd-Pleaser
Have you heard about the new youth tonic that’s just arrived on the market? It’s called Thelma, it’s playing at your local movie house, and it stars the incomparable June Squibb as a grandma who gets scammed and sets out to get her money back.
June Squibb plays a woman on a mission
At 94, June Squibb defies all the big-screen clichés about little old ladies. Ride along with her.
Thelma casts Squibb as Thelma Post, an elderly widow living contentedly and independently in Los Angeles’ Encino neighborhood, despite the loving concerns of her daughter Gail (Parker Posey), son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg), and 24-year-old grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger). Danny, sweet and distracted, may not have figured out his own life yet, but he has Thelma in his corner as cheerleader and best friend; their relationship is one of the early delights of writer-director Josh Margolin’s debut feature-length film.
It’s that bond, though, that undoes Thelma when a scammer pretending to be a jailed Danny calls her on the phone and convinces her to part with $10,000 in “bail money.”
Once the ruse is revealed, Thelma is more embarrassed and angry than bewildered, especially since it gives her family further ammunition for talking about assisted living. Thelma subverts movie clichés about little old ladies at every turn by making the character fiercely individualistic and no one’s victim — sometimes to her own disadvantage — and Squibb responds by building Thelma from the inside out. She’s not just anybody’s grandmother, she’s this very particular woman who happens to be a grandmother. And you kind of want her to be your grandmother.
Thelma vows to retrieve her money
Anyway. Thelma vows with narrowed eye to retrieve her money, and, while she no longer drives, she has a P.O. box number in Van Nuys as a clue. Enter Richard Roundtree as Thelma’s old friend Ben, who lives in a nearby care community (and likes it, thank you very much) but, more importantly, has a spiffy red mobility scooter that can go 43 miles on one charge. By the scene in which our hardy heroine takes Ben’s ride for a spin — and just keeps on going — you know you’re watching something very special.
Thelma and Ben on their mission
The film doesn’t rest just on the gutsy charms of its lead actress, but on everybody in the show. Roundtree, in the Shaft star’s final performance before his death in October 2023, makes Ben a fussy but loyal companion on the bumpy road to retribution, and Posey is marvelously funny as a tightly wound helicopter mom/daughter. Her and Gregg’s scenes with Hechinger’s Danny are blissful sendups of Parents Who Worry Too Much, and Hechinger responds with a shaggy, exasperated grace that will be recognizable to anyone who’s been stuck too long in prelaunch mode.
Thelma and Danny’s relationship is one of the early delights
What keeps Thelma from floating away on a bubble of whimsy is the film’s acknowledgment of the sorrows and struggles that come with old age: the rusty joints, the small daily humiliations, the loneliness above all. At one point in their odyssey, Ben and Thelma drop in on an old friend (Bunny Levine) who’s become fossilized in the amber of early dementia; the sequence ends with one of the best gags in the movie, but the sadness lingers. On its least forced and most moving level, Thelma is about the indomitable human urge to keep going and the hard-won wisdom to know when to heed time’s warnings. It’s a movie that rages against the dying of the light — at 30 mph.
Thelma’s spirit is unbreakable
