Many years ago, when I was old enough to know I cared about movies but too young to actually know anything, it used to drive me crazy when people earned an Oscar nomination (or victory) after being onscreen for five minutes. They couldn’t possibly deserve it when the competition actually has, you know, multiple scenes to memorize. As if quantity and quality always have something to do with each other.
In “Grandma,” Sam Elliott arrives and effortlessly packs decades of memories and resentment into his limited time as Karl, an old flame of Elle’s (Lily Tomlin) who’s lost none of his fire. “I like being old; young people are stupid,” she tells him, not necessarily talking about herself, not necessarily talking about someone else. Elliott’s compact, impassioned work deserves praise, and Tomlin’s great, too, the entire movie; “Grandma” is a small drama hinging entirely on a lead performance providing the source of a family’s trickle-down effect, and the 75-year-old actress absolutely carries the 75-minute movie.
Thankfully, this isn’t one of those annoying “Sassy Grandma” movies (let’s all resume shaking our heads at “Tammy”), though Elle, who doesn’t make a big deal out of getting a tattoo when she needs time to collect her thoughts, does have spunk: “Your face looks like an armpit,” she tells Cam (Nat Wolff of “Paper Towns”), the embarrassingly bearded doofus who played a significant part in Elle’s granddaughter Sage’s (Julia Garner) unexpected pregnancy. Written and directed by the remarkably inconsistent Paul Weitz (“In Good Company, “American Dreamz,” “Admission”), “Grandma” takes place in one day as Elle quickly shakes off a breakup with her much-younger girlfriend (Judy Greer, who, as the dumpee, can’t repeat her classic “Arrested Development” kiss-off “Say goodbye to these!”) and tries to raise the $600 that Sage needs for an abortion scheduled for later that day. Suddenly Elle, a poet of mild renown a while back, turning her credit cards into a wind chime doesn’t seem as wise as it did at the time.
The quality of the writing wavers from scene to scene, Weitz not providing much to wrestle with; “Grandma” focuses tightly while answering any relevant questions pretty clearly. Yet Tomlin’s always showcasing Elle’s observation, distance and engagement, hurling lessons while also knowing how to recognize when she’s wrong. It’s the kind of juicy part that quality performers of any age deserve. Also, unrelated: Is it me, or is the abortion clinic here the same one that was in “Juno”?
3 stars (out of four)
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