A Hero Will Rise, and Get on a Scooter

When you watch a lot of movies, you start to see patterns. Thematic resonance, stylistic devices, narrative choices; at some point you find yourself catching echoes and recurrences of things you watched a week or a month ago. Sometimes – most times, really – it’s simple coincidence. But sometimes it’s a trend.

Four years ago, J Blakeson released I Care a Lot, a spiky comedy where Rosamund Pike played a scam artist who picked on the wrong little old lady. The movie’s satire lay in genuine outrage at the idea of bad-faith conservatorships – in which people abuse the concept of legal guardianship to effectively milk the elderly of their savings.

And now there are no fewer than three projects from the perspective of elderly women who refuse to roll over when the scammers come calling.

There’s Karl Hearne’s The G, which premiered at Fantasia last month and stars Dale Dickey as a very resourceful woman who sets out to avenge her husband’s death in an extortion scheme. Lin Shaye stars in the upcoming miniseries Ellen, from genre filmmakers Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, as a widow who goes all John Wick on the developer trying to drive her off her land.

And then there’s Josh Margolin’s Thelma, a charming, only slightly silly comedy starring June Squibb as a 93-year-old nana defrauded of $10,000 in the grandparent scam who decides to get her money back by any means necessary – which in her case means driving an electric scooter across Los Angeles to confront the crooks. 

It’s a goofy, surprisingly poignant character piece, and a showcase for Squibb, an Oscar nominee who’s somehow never headlined her own movie in decades of work. And Margolin – who clearly adores his star – surrounds her with an ensemble that includes Fred Hechinger as Thelma’s affectionate slacker grandson Daniel, Parker Posey and Clark Gregg as his parents and Richard Roundtree as Ben, the old friend whose scooter (and counsel) becomes essential to Thelma’s plan.

Malcolm McDowell and Nicole Byer also turn up in key roles, the whole thing takes place over 24 hours and the script manages to build solid relationships between various characters that serve to enrich and ground the caper conceit.

Squibb isn’t playing a total naïf or an avenging oldie, but a woman determined to fix a mistake. The affectionate chemistry she finds with Hechinger is genuinely sweet and entirely believable: Thelma and Daniel feel like they create their own little bubble when they’re together, each trying just a little too hard to protect the other from the scary world outside.

Thelma similarly puts up a brave, fussy front with her daughter and son-in-law; it’s only when she’s with a contemporary like Ben that she can be more honest about her fears and limitations – and her shame at having fallen for a scam in the first place.

Those moments are what make Thelma sing for me, and they’re the key to Margolin’s script; it’s a far more empathetic film than its perky trailer suggests, taking the time to consider the existential challenge of growing old enough that the world starts moving too quickly around you. It’s a One Last Adventure picture, though it never draws our attention to that fact. But I suppose it doesn’t have to.

VVS’ Blu-ray doesn’t offer anything beyond the feature, which is a little bit disappointing given that Margolin has talked about the film being inspired by his own relationship with his grandmother, and that’s the sort of story commentary tracks are made for. (Or a featurette, at the very least.) But don’t blame the label; Magnolia’s US edition, released last month, is also devoid of extras. Some studios don’t know a treasure when they have one.

Thelma is now available on Blu-ray from VVS Films in Canada and Magnolia Home Entertainment in the US. Also, I realize The Beekeeper uses an elder scam as its inciting incident, so that makes four of these projects. Totally a trend!

Up next: Shout! Studios brings The Last Unicorn to disc in a 4K restoration. I had not seen The Last Unicorn previously, so this was … enlightening. Upgrade that subscription so you don’t miss it!