Apologies if you were expecting a review of Star Wars here, but Disney is not allowing critics access prior to the film’s opening on the 17th, and anyway, we’ve got Grandma, which was made for $600,000 in 19 days and has a running time of 79 minutes and stars a 76-year-old, so there is that. It’s also a feminist comedy with a plot driven by the need for an abortion, and if that doesn’t win you over, I’m not sure what else to say. It’s terrific? It’s small-scale, but punches magnificently above its weight? I laughed, and also cried? I could say that and have just said that, because it’s all true.
Grandma stars Lily Tomlin and there is every sense this wouldn’t be a film unless it starred Lily Tomlin because she is the film, basically. It’s the power of her performance that whacks you between the eyes. And it was, in fact, written for her by the writer-director Paul Weitz (American Pie, can you believe, and also About a Boy) and this is, as far as I can gather, her first substantial, bona fide leading film role for nearly 30 years, even though she is the foremother of this kind of feminist comedy, if it can rightly be called a ‘feminist’ comedy. I suppose any film that is properly about women has to be called that, to distinguish it from those in which J-Lo or Kate Hudson or similar is fixated with shoes/men/the perfect wedding venue and then takes off her glasses and my, isn’t she beautiful, and why didn’t we see that coming? This put me most in mind of Juno. Not as multilayered, possibly. But smart, funny, touching, and with characters you come to love.
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