This review is part of our coverage of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
The tone: Elderly widow Thelma (June Squibb) is quietly enjoying her golden years when she receives a series of terrifying phone calls: first, from someone who looks like her beloved grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger), claiming to be in legal trouble, then from a strange man. who tells him he has to send $10,000 to a PO box to save it. Panicked, Thelma does so, and only later realizes that she has been tricked and that the police will do nothing.
Thelma is determined to do something, if only to prove to her worried daughter and son-in-law (Parker Posey and Clark Gregg) that she's still capable of living on her own. So, with the help of Ben (Richard Roundtree), one of her few remaining friends, Thelma sets out on her mission, one that will take her from… well, from one corner of the San Fernando Valley to the other. Still, it's a pretty long trip on a mobility scooter.
“My mother is on the run!”: telma Writer-director Josh Margolin has created at least the second half of a perfect double feature with the beekeeper, which shares some narrative beats (albeit with a darker twist). And while telma has a lighter tone, the spirit of Jason Statham and John Wick and other fictional tough guys is very much present as Thelma works to locate her money and the men responsible for taking it.
In some way, telma It is a parody, although the satire is not buried beneath the surface; it's more like a veneer that hangs over the narrative and becomes sharper when Thelma is in motion. The action itself is still grounded in realism, but when Nick Chuba's crisp, compelling score kicks in and the editing is underway, a sequence in which Thelma daringly escapes from Ben's nursing home sounds like Mission Impossible. (Thelma can't run quite as fast as Tom Cruise, but has the same value).
However, tropes like the “recruit a team” montage take on a different tone when all the people you could recruit for your team are friends who died. It is elements like this that elevate telma above mere parody, since it is inserted into the reality of that phase of life: enjoying the time you have left, being very aware that it is running out.
Watch out, Ethan Hunt: the cast of telma It's small but mighty, with June Squibb delving into the role with gusto. Squibb is no newcomer to comedy (in the HBO comedy special 7 days in hell, she played a vengeful Queen Elizabeth who at one point punches Kit Harington), but this shows off her full range of talents in a really exciting way; She knows exactly when to activate the “old lady” spell and when to turn it around.
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