★★★★½- THE POST
- One of 2024’s most crowd-pleasing and uplifting cinematic experiences -
Danny Markowitz (Fred Hechinger) and his beloved grandma Thelma Post (June Squibb) have always been close, but especially since her husband died two years ago.
While he helps her adjust to new technologies, she offers him sage life and relationship advice.
“I just don’t know what my selling points are,” he opines, as they sit down to watch their favourite screen-star Tom Cruise save the world once more in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.
“You’re going to land on your feet.. like Cruise,” she assure him, just as Ethan Hunt makes THAT fateful leap between London rooftops.
So when she receives a call, purportedly from Danny, claiming that he’s in jail, having hit a pregnant woman with a car, Thelma is anxious to assist in any way she can. That means that when the expected follow-up from his “defence attorney” comes, she doesn’t bat an eyelid to the request for $10,000 cash to be mailed to a particular P.O. Box across town in Van Nyes.
However, it’s just after she’s finished depositing the envelope that daughter Gail (Parker Posey) is finally free of her meeting and responds to Thelma’s plaintive voice message. Instantly convinced its a scam, even though they can’t initially raise Danny, Gail and husband Alan (Clarke Gregg) believe this proves Thelma should no longer be living on her own.
Once he resurfaces, Danny though, vehemently disagrees. “I lost my wallet the other day. I don’t think that’s evidence of a deteriorating mind.”
As for Thelma, faced with the additional indignation and humiliation of having all her accounts frozen and cards cancelled “as a precaution”, she decides to take matters into her own hands.
Finding the address she’s discarded in the Post Office rubbish bin, she decides a stake-out is required. But with her friend group dwindling thanks to heart attacks, sepsis and enforced moves to Cleveland, Thelma believes her only hope of making it to Van Nyes is to “borrow” Ben Halperin’s (Richard Roundtree) mobility scooter.
She’ll first, though, have to find a way to get to the Belwood Village Senior Living Facility and then get over the awkwardness of having ignored Ben since her husband passed.
Cue a hilarious, pitch-perfect “heist” movie as our heroine attempts to find a way to confront those who dared to defraud her and defy the odds by getting her money back, while also evading the attentions of her “concerned” family.
It’s a fabulous low-fi Mission: Impossible conceit, magnificently executed by debutant writer-director Josh Margolin (who was inspired by his now 104-year-old grandmother’s brush with phone fraud) and brilliantly brought to life by a terrific ensemble, that also includes Malcolm McDowell and Nicole Byer.
But while White Lotus’ Hechinger and Shaft star Roundtree (in what was his final role before his death in October last year) deliver memorable turns, the movie rightly belongs to Squibb.
Finally given the chance to carry a film after a near 35-year screen career that’s included memorable performances in the likes of Nebraska and About Schmidt, the nonagenarian is simply superb as the feisty, indefatigable Thelma. Whether it’s carrying out a hearing-aid assisted interrogation, or finding a way to use her personal alarm as a decoy, she is an absolute hoot and inspiration, without ever feeling like a fantasy or a character not grounded in reality.
“This whole thing has been really ridiculous,” she reflects, while watching a less-than-slick version of the musical Annie. That may be partially true, but Thelma is also one of the most crowd-pleasing and uplifting cinematic experiences you’re likely to have this year.
- James Croot, THE POST
Thelma is now playing at Light House Cinema!