‘Thelma’: Sundance Review

Dir/scr. Josh Margolin. US, 2023. 97mins

Holding out until the age of 94 for her first lead role, June Squibb proves what her legion of devoted fans has always known: she’s a superstar. Appearing opposite the late, lamented Richard Roundtree in his final role, Squibb is a force of nature as Thelma, a nonagenarian grandmother whose considerable powers are slipping but is still stridently independent. Making his debut, writer-director Josh Margolin combines acuity and playfulness in a funny action-drama whose spirit animal is Mission: Impossible. Thelma is a buyer’s delight and a marketer’s challenge: expect a headline deal from its Sundance world premiere.

Combines acuity and playfulness

Can you call a film whose set piece is a senior citizen’s slow-mo roll onto a bed a thriller? Or a tense drama, when one of the crimes is the theft is a two-seater mobility scooter? Margolin proves you can. He delivers an entertaining film which is also sensitively-observant of the hard realities of ageing and its affects on the wider family. There’s a ready-made audience for Thelma – the Michael Caine old-codger crowd – even if reaching them internationally may prove difficult. Strong support from Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, a cameo from Malcolm McDowell and, in particular, an endearing performance from Fred Hechinger as Thelma’s grandson Danny will help.

Jobless and aimless, 24 year-old Danny has been assigned to check in on his beloved 93 year-old grandmother Thelma by his still-helicoptering parents – mum Gail (Posey), who is Thelmas’s daughter, and dad Alan (Gregg Clark). This mostly consists of giving her internet lessons while all his other offers of help are gently but firmly rebuffed. Widowed relatively recently, Thelma is firmly in charge of all her faculties and determined to remain independent. She will eventually come to realise that there’s a fine line between justified stubbornness and child-like petulance – as will the audience, making Thelma an education both on-screen and off.

But Margolin has higher spirits than that to hurdle. The action creaks off when Thelma achieves computer skills which are proficient enough to see her scammed into parting with $10,000 in cash (kept, naturally, under the bed in her LA condo). The general consensus in her concerned family is that this is just another sign that she is slipping: the words ‘care home’ come into play. Thelma’s more about revenge, though, and remembers a letter she recently received from her ‘boring’ old friend Ben (Roundtree), waxing lyrical about his care home and his new mobility scooter. She also knows where to find a gun.

Central to the joy of Thelma is how Margolin – for whom this is informed by personal experience – co-opts the spirit of Mission: Impossible onto Thelma’s quest. She has been watching Tom Cruise on TV with Danny, so it’s only natural that it should inform her caper across Los Angeles, with Ben reluctantly in tow. Margolin cheekily cuts and scores his film as if Thelma and Ben were on the lam, applying slow motion to their breathless efforts to climb staircases.

Yet nobody is poking fun at Thelma, either – she is the star of her show and the architect of her own successes and failures. Squibb, perhaps most familiar to international audience from Nebraska, devours the opportunity inspired by Margolin’s time with his own grandmother, now aged 103. Roundtree portrays Ben with all his customary elegance, underlining, unintentionally, how precious our time is with these talents.

Margolin also inserts an almost Mulholland Drive-like sequence into the film with an old friend of Thelma. The interlude is strange, funny, but also desperately sad – and leads Thelma to a greater appreciation of how loved she is. It’s typical of the rhythm of the piece, with the director softly punctuating his laughs and his highs with a sandpaper-ish swipe of reality. The LA locations also help ground some of Thelma’s aspirations; literally, on occasion.

Like any Mission: Impossible, Thelma’s denouement is predictable and, perhaps, a bit of a let-down – but neither is it the point of the film, so let’s forget and move on, like all these seniors. For all that it does and tries to do, Thelma will be celebrated. Even if grand-children everywhere have to explain streaming services in order to do so.