June Squibb Rides Again

There’s the movie I was afraid Thelma would be, and then there’s the movie it really is. It’s better than I feared, but not all great. I thought it was going to assemble the majority of its humor from “it’s funny ‘cause she’s old,” complete with all the usual cliches, up to and including elderly white people dancing, waving guns, walking in slow motion towards the camera, and having their movements scored to hip-hop music. It’s the kind of comedic hackery that formed the majority of the humor in, say, the 2017 remake of Going in Style. Thelma doesn’t entirely work, but it also avoids (most of) that nonsense. It’s not condescending, at least not how I thought it’d be.

Written and directed by Josh Margolin, Thelma is a rare star vehicle for the 93-year-old veteran character actress June Squibb. She’s been a welcome presence in movies like About Schmidt, Nebraska, and Palm Springs (she also does a voice in Inside Out 2).

Widowed relatively recently, Thelma still lives alone, to the constant concern of her daughter (Parker Posey), son-in-law (Clark Gregg), and layabout grandson (Fred Hechinger). When scammers spoof the grandson’s voice to steal from her, Thelma gets on a scooter and seeks revenge. In doing so, she’s assisted by a nursing home resident played by Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree, in his final movie role before his death last fall. Throughout, Thelma draws the ire of her family members, who are, somewhat understandably, worried that his nonagenarian woman has taken off on a scooter, much less intending to go toe-to-toe with possibly violent criminals. That scooter’s the film’s third major character.

Thelma has a similar setup to the recent Jason Statham vehicle The Beekeeper, except that a 93-year-old grandmother plays the Statham part this time. But it also breaks away from realism in the same way—in real life, and unlike both Thelma and The Beekeeper, those kinds of scams tend to be carried out by people in Romania and other overseas locations rather than within easy driving—and revenge—distance of their targets. That sort of scam on someone local wouldn’t even make sense. Also, unlike the Statham version, Thelma isn’t going to end in over-the-top violence. It comes up with an ending that’s more creative, albeit even more implausible than the setup.

The film’s at its best in a scene where Thelma calls a succession of old friends to ask them for help, only to discover most of them are dead or have left town. Squibb is wonderful, making the most of what is her first-ever starring role, while Roundtree’s performance is also a fine career swan song.

I appreciate that Thelma doesn’t go for the comedic low-hanging fruit. But it never settles on a tone. It’s a comedy, I suppose, and there are laughs here and there. The film occasionally uses its absurd premise as a sight gag. But it never squares the circle between the comedy and the pathos in the story.