Thelma

Grade: B+

I’m not the first critic to bring this up, but it’s not lost on me that Thelma basically shares a plot with The Beekeeper, out earlier this year. I took a chance on the Jason Statham action vehicle in February, and it got my unexpected thumbs up. Both are revenge films, as a result of an old lady getting scammed online or over the phone. Thelma is the feel-goodiest movie of the year. I saw it, and want to go out and recommend it to everyone I see, particularly family members. You will too.

The title character is played by my friend June Squibb. In her 90+ years, Thelma has only lived two of them alone – the last two, after the death of her husband. One day, she receives a phone call from a scammer who has faked her 24-year-old grandson’s voice. She takes it seriously, and sends $10,000 to “get him out of trouble.” Her finding out she’s been duped sends her on a revenge mission. She doesn’t drive anymore, so she “borrows” a scooter from a friend in the retirement home. The supporting cast includes Parker Posey, who was prolific in the 90s and early 2000s – and was recently so memorable in Beau Is Afraid. We also have Shaft himself: the late Richard Roundtree, in his final feature length movie role. Last year, he appeared in an “old person” comedy I enjoyed very much called Moving On – as did Malcolm McDowell, whose role in Thelma I won’t spoil.

Most of the movie sits in the “solid B” zone for me. I’m boosting the grade to the next highest one because of the handful of sporadic lightning-in-a-bottle moments that I thought were just brilliant. I’ll tell you about a couple. You will adore the scene in a gas station parking lot that has dialogue that is so organic, free-flowing, and potentially at least partly improv’d. It has a rhythm and a pop that can’t have come from a screenwriter typing on a page. It hearkens back to so many of Parker Posey’s comedic bits from the 90s (and Posey participates in this scene). It provided me with my biggest laughs of the year. I started to take a drink of my Dasani, but after the first one-liner, I decided it would be best to put the bottle down for the rest of the scene.

I will be circumspect in describing some others, as they take place during the climax. The way Thelma deceives and turns the tables on the villains is clever. I was fooled. The moment that involves entering in some numbers (that’s as far as I’ll go) is cute and sweet. The movie has playful fun with the action homages, and plays it as if it’s one of those films. You have your Top Guns and Indiana Jonses and Mission: Impossibles where you might wonder something like “How is he going to get on that moving train from the edge of that cliff?” In Thelma, I felt equally as tense as I asked myself “Is she going to make it up the stairs?” And there’s dialogue like “That’s just a pop-up, Grandma. You can get rid of that. Click on the X. It’s not always obvious – sometimes they make it hard to find. Click on the X and it will go away.”

I worked with June Squibb briefly in the summer of 1992. I was part of a small children’s ensemble, in the last city of a 5 week national tour. June was one of the few who talked to me consistently, and she couldn’t have been sweeter. 10 years after that, she’s playing Jack Nicholson’s wife in About Schmidt – and in the next decade, she’s nominated for an Oscar for Nebraska (my Best Picture that year). I’ve been meaning to re-introduce myself, let her know I never forgot her from 32 years ago, and congratulate her on the enormous success she’s had in the new millennium – and I finally did. She’s in her 90s and is closer to the end than the beginning. Don’t hesitate to “say those things” as the expression goes. You never know when you’ll suddenly lose the opportunity, and be left thinking “Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I say that?” Thelma is the kind of movie that will inspire and motivate you to do that.

Grade: B+