Movie Review: THELMA

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: June 21st, 2024 / 01:35 AM

THELMA movie poster | ©2024 Magnolia Pictures

Rating: PG-13
Stars: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Clark Gregg, Parker Posey, Malcolm McDowell
Writer: Josh Margolin
Director: Josh Margolin
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: June 21, 2024

Like a number of elderly Americans, ninety-three-year-old Thelma Post (June Squibb) falls for a costly telephone scam. Unlike most victims of this type of crime, Thelma is determined to do something about it.

Thelma is a widow, living independently in L.A. County’s San Fernando Valley. We see from the outset that she is not very computer-savvy, as her twenty-something grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) tries to instruct her in the finer points of an inbox.

Danny has a lot of self-doubts as a human being, but he’s devoted to his grandma Thelma. For her part, Thelma adores Danny. So, when Thelma gets a phone call from “Danny,” who says he’s in prison after a car accident, and he sounds funny because his nose is broken, she races to the rescue.

Thelma only finds out that Danny is fine after she’s sent $10,000 in cash to a “lawyer” using a post box. Danny’s parents, Thelma’s daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg), assist Thelma with filing a police report, but it doesn’t seem likely that anything is going to happen.

Thelma, however, is going to track down the scammers and get her money back, no matter what.

Directed and written by Josh Margolin, THELMA turns out to be both a mostly cheerful comedy and a straightforward meditation on what becoming old does and does not mean. Over the course of the film, we meet several of Thelma’s remaining peers, who have different abilities and different notions of what kind of help they need and will accept.

For Thelma, worthwhile life means freedom and self-sufficiency. For longtime acquaintance Ben (the late Richard Roundtree), it means safety and comfort. For Danny, it means purpose and the hope that he can succeed at something. Filmmaker Margolin lets all of this roll out through the action, rather than staged debate.

The movie is insightful and has moments of wistfulness without getting maudlin. On the flip side, the humor is gentle and empathetic without being mean-spirited. If “believable” is overstating it, the situations are consistently plausible. We sympathize with Thelma’s dilemmas and even her defensiveness; the scam is presented in a way where she doesn’t seem overly credulous for falling for it.

Squibb makes Thelma a fully-realized character, someone whose internal contradictions make complete sense to us. Hechinger’s buoyant warmth is a perfect match for her; their chemistry together is delightful.

Roundtree is charming, and Posey and Gregg both register as well-meaning middle-class Southern Californians. Malcolm McDowell does an expert third-act turn.

For a movie that is in some ways about the passage of time, THELMA’s arguably biggest flaw may be that it doesn’t convey what’s happening when very well. We feel like a whole night is elapsing, then find out it’s still early evening. This, in turn, makes us wonder more than we should about how far places are from one another. It’s not a huge issue, but it becomes a little distracting.

Otherwise, THELMA is consistently enjoyable, funny and touching without visibly trying too hard. There’s also a sweet clip of Margolin’s real-life grandmother in the closing credits. No wonder he wanted to honor her in this way; kudos to him for doing it so well.

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