Review by Cate Marquis
Lily Tomlin delivers a tour-de-force performance in GRANDMA, an inter-generational comedy road trip. The title may bring to mind a sweet little old lady baking cookies but Tomlin’s Grandma Elle is something else. Elle Reid is a fierce, sharp-tongued lesbian poet, academic and early feminist who raised her daughter with her longtime woman partner. When Elle’s high school senior granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) comes to her in need of help, afraid to go to her domineering CEO mother Judy (Marcia Gay Harden), grandma and granddaughter take off on quest that indirectly recaps the many cultural shifts around subjects such as feminism, LGBT rights, birth control, out-of-wedlock birth, single mothers, and other social issues since Grandma’s heyday in the ’70s.
At one time, any of those subjects might have made this film controversial or provoked outrage, but now only one topic the film touches on will do that – abortion. Due to that subject, a certain segment of the population will not want to see this well-made, insightful, thoughtful film, and some may even will recoil at the idea of a film from this family’s particular viewpoint, although there have been plenty of films on the subject of abortion from the opposing view. While this one issue is not this main topic in this film, it is to the film’s credit that it handles the subject with a certain balance and sensitivity, exploring the feelings and rights of fathers, differing opinions on the subject, and underlining that this is not a decision taken lightly.
The reason the granddaughter needs Grandma’s help is to pay for an abortion. But when Sage comes to her for help, Grandma is struggling with her own emotional issues. A virtual recluse, Elle is still mourning the death of her longtime partner Violet, the woman with whom she raised her driven businesswoman daughter. Worse, on the morning Sage turns up at her door, Elle has just broken up with her younger girlfriend Olivia (Judy Greer). Nonetheless, Elle puts all that aside to help her granddaughter.
The problem is that Grandma is broke too, being between teaching jobs, having just paid off her debts and then cut up her credit cards and now waiting on a check for past work. Like her granddaughter, Grandma is reluctant to go to her strong-willed successful daughter, from whom she is estranged, knowing she will not take the news of Sage’s pregnancy well. The father, Sage’s slacker ex-boyfriend (Nat Wolff), is no help and really not interested. So, armed with Grandma’s first editions of books by feminist icons like Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir, which Elle is sure are worth hundreds, the two set off in Grandma’s creaky old car to raise the money from her old friends around Los Angeles, before her granddaughter’s appointment at a clinic for the procedure at 5 o’clock.
Director Paul Weitz has crafted a polished, well-made road trip film that both paints a warm portrait of family bonds, and handles its topics intelligently and with a light touch. Weitz skillfully, subtly blends the social issues into the plot and peppers the comedy with sharp, witty observations, but the film’s greatest strength is Lily Tomlin. Tomlin is at the center of the film’s comedy and its drama, creating a complex character. Elle is both sarcastic and kind-hearted, a character that feels like a true portrait of an early feminist and lesbian, a person with a chip on her shoulder from spending her life defying conventions and resisting pressure to change who she is. It is a wonderful, touching and funny performance. The film touches on the personal for Tomlin, a gay woman herself, and she brings all her comedy and dramatic skills to bear in this film.
As prickly, outspoken Elle, Tomlin shoulders the bulk of the comedy duties but the film also builds up a sense of family and emotional warmth, no matter how unconventional that family is. Tomlin is greatly aided by a strong supporting cast. Julie Garner is charming as the granddaughter, who clearly loves her grandma but often does not get her views or is sometimes embarrassed by her bull-in-china shop approach. Fine performances are also offered by Marcia Gay Harden as Elle’s success-driven daughter, who raised her daughter Sage as a single parent, Judy Greer as Elle’s jilted young lover, Laverne Cox as a transgender tattoo artist and especially by Sam Elliot in a moving, dramatic role a long-ago ex-lover.
Much of the comedy is built around Grandma’s reaction to the changes time has brought – that the free clinic where a woman could get an inexpensive abortion is now a trendy coffee shop, that the owner of the lesbian coffee shop she remembers is now more about business than politics, that her treasured books by feminist icons are not worth what she imagined they should be, and other shocks to her ideals. Her sarcastic responses are funny but there is a touching underlying melancholy too. The three generations also indirectly illustrate women’s changing roles and opportunities – from the radial feminist lesbian grandma to her all-business career woman daughter (directing her company from her treadmill desk), to the gentle but unfocused granddaughter who takes for granted much of her mother’s and grandmother’s hard-won social victories.
This smart, funny film also gets at some human truths but never gets bogged down in lectures on social issues. It remains a warm, human character-driven film about a particular family, with a sparkling performance by a comedy great and feminist pioneer at its center.
RATING: 4 ½ OUT OF 5 STARS
GRANDMA opens in St. Louis September 11, 2015
