June Squibb Is Endlessly Fascinating in ‘Thelma’

June Squibb, the larky senior citizen who walked away with Nebraska, has deservedly landed her first starring role in the giddy action thriller Thelma. Although she’s 94 years young, it’s an event that’s been worth waiting for. This is a feel-good comedy bordering on farce, but she makes every scene and every line so natural that when you laugh, you’re reacting to genuine humor, not calculatedly constructed punch lines. When she saws away at her needlepoint, you fear she will puncture something besides her canvas. Every sag in her neck indicates she’s lived a real life, each line in her face suggests an actual life experience, and she is endlessly fascinating. 

The film that earns this much praise is not unimpeachably perfect. It’s slow, clumsily written, and sometimes awkwardly directed—both by writer-director Josh Margolin, who based it on actual events in the life of his own grandmother, who is still going strong at 104 and makes a sweet cameo appearance at the end. The “movie Thelma” is a 93-year-old Los Angeles widow who has resisted every attempt by her clueless daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) to send her to a senior living facility, staying up to date learning computer skills from her 24-year-old grandson Danny (well-played by Fred Hechinger), and developing a keen passion for Tom Cruise and sushi.  

One night, someone claiming to be her grandson calls and informs her he’s in jail and desperately needs $10,000 to get out. Happens all the time these days in prevalent telephone crimes aimed at milking vulnerable, elderly victims of their life savings. Thelma falls for it and mails the money to a post office box in Van Nuys, but when the real Danny clues her into what she’s done, the old bird goes into revenge mode and embarks on a plan to find the crook who robbed her and get her money back. Embarrassed but undeterred, Thelma sets out on her own, traveling across L.A. in a stolen mobility scooter with the help of her best friend Ben, played, in his last film appearance, by the late Richard Roundtree, better known as Shaft. Thelma even “borrows” a gun for her adventure, utilizing elements of the plot in Mission: Impossible.  “Do you even know how to use it?” asks Ben. Her response: “How hard can it be? Idiots use them all the time.”

It all leads up to a patently ridiculous resolution, with a guest appearance by Malcolm McDowall as the villainous scammer who adds some wry humor of his own. The result is a mixed bag, ranging from clever to predictable. But the film makes interesting contrasts between the elderly and the carelessly deviant society they live in, and there’s something to applaud about a character more in charge of her casualties than her peers, most of whom are dead or flirting with senility. There’s no old-age funk about June Squibb or the spirited way she jazzes up Thelma.