In the best possible way, June Squibb, native of Vandalia, Illinois, Oscar nominee for “Nebraska” and one of the replacement-cast strippers in the 1959 Broadway production of “Gypsy,” has transformed into the Stephen Sondheim lyric written for the stripper she played, Electra, who sang: “I’m electrifying / And I ain’t even trying.”
Now 94, Squibb takes care of business every minute in the enjoyable contrivance “Thelma,” which succeeds, sometimes in spite of itself, for reasons revealed in the first minute of writer-director Josh Margolin’s comedy.
Thelma’s at her computer at home, in the neighborhood of Sherman Oaks or thereabouts in east Los Angeles. She’s looking for a specific email — her late husband singing “Some Enchanted Evening” — among all her unopened emails. By her side, coaching her through the process, is her loving, slightly directionless but big-hearted grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger of “The White Lotus,” Season 1). It’s a familiar scene of gentle comic frustration, made enjoyable by the affection and the light touch of both actors, generations apart but simpatico where it counts. Even in a sitcom, which this is, sort of, it helps to keep the behavior in the realm of real life.
Alone, a few scenes later, Thelma answers an unidentified caller’s phone call. It’s her grandson, in jail. There’s been a misunderstanding of some sort. He needs bail money, and someone’s calling her in a minute to arrange payment. The call comes and Thelma, distraught, agrees to send $10,000 to a post office box nearby in the Valley.
The whole thing’s a scam, effective enough to work on Thelma. Concerned, her therapist daughter (Parker Posey) and tightly wrapped son-in-law (Clark Gregg) chalk it up to old age, wondering if it’s time for Thelma to transition into assisted living. But she has other plans, and would like to get her money back. The plans involve a mobility scooter and its owner, both borrowed from a nearby nursing home for a few hours. Richard Roundtree, whose final film this was, plays the owner, Ben, with a just-so air of real enjoyment. The pair set out to confront the scam artists, whoever they are, and as they embark on their big day out, “Thelma” uses the casually spoofy trappings of spy and revenge-thriller movies — the most obvious being composer Nick Chuba’s insistent “Mission: Impossible”-inspired score — to nudge the action along.
Now, this could’ve been insufferably cute. And it isn’t! It isn’t. Parts of it are what you’d call sufferably cute, but “Thelma” has a canny sense of timing, and comic tone, which accommodates the serious matters as they arise. Aging, losing friends and spouses, dreading the next fall or stumble, wondering when it’s time to make a change or consent to some help: These musings are ever-present in Margolin’s film. Squibb and Roundtree elevate every scene they share; Posey and Gregg and Hechinger actually interact like a quasi-real family, talking and muttering over each other without hammering the rhythms.
This is Margolin’s first directorial feature, and from the looks of it (he also served as editor) he has clever instincts on how to finesse his own joke reflex by backing off visually, or cutting away at the right moment rather than overstressing the humor. At one point Gregg, as son-in-law Alan, obsesses, quietly, over something to do with databases, about which he has no knowledge beyond his feeling that “you don’t want to end up in one.” Far from home in their two-seat mobility scooter, like city cousins of the Iowa characters in “The Straight Story,” Thelma and Ben speak forthrightly about their time of life.
“I didn’t expect to get so old,” Thelma says, and the way Squibb delivers that line, it’s simply a declaration of fact, no despair, no fuss. You believe her, and in her own way she is electrifying. Even when “Thelma” operates on a somewhat lower current.
“Thelma” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong language)
Running time: 1:37
How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 21
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
