Lily Tomlin is more hardcore than your grandma could ever dream of being. Your grandma might be fun—maybe she gives you hard candies, or lets you stay up extra-late watching the old MGM musicals, or slips $20 of “walking-around money” in your palm before you leave after every visit. Ellie Reid, the feisty senior Tomlin plays in the Sundance graduate Grandma, laughs at the homebodies that cared for you when Mom and Dad needed a weekend off. She’s not a regular grandma; she’s a cool grandma. When a feckless stoner knocks up her granddaughter, Ellie doesn’t stroke her grandchild’s hair and assure her everything will be alright. She gets in the car, goes to the worthless bastard’s house, and smacks him in the nuts with a hockey stick so he’ll pony up the requisite abortion money.
Our dauntless Tasha Robinson covered the film’s screening at Tribeca back in April, and was pleased to find an indie picture with a strong supporting cast and general spirit of warmth. In her own words, “Some of the dramatic beats are facile, and Garner is a weakness both in the writing and in the acting, but there’s plenty of balance in the rest of the cast, and Tomlin is just pure enjoyment throughout, in a role that lets her do the puckish sourness she does best.” Tasha’s coverage also notes the most hardcore aspect of Tomlin’s performance, a turn defined by its hardcoreness; homegirl has taken her first leading film role after more than two decades of smaller parts, and what a return it is. Take a look at the trailer, available to view at Deadline.
The trail of the tape
Title: Grandma
Director: Paul Weitz
Screenwriter: Paul Weitz
Cast: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer
Release date: August 21, 2015
The entire trailer in one line of dialogue: “I’m gonna be there because this is my granddaughter.”
The entire trailer in one screengrab:
Director Paul Weitz’s track record is pretty spotty. Over the past decade, he’s been responsible for everything from Little Fockers to Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant to American Dreamz to Being Flynn, films which miraculously all found different ways to be very bad. But the writing on display in the trailer looks to be clever, with the Feminine Mystique line generating laughs from both the feminist and comic-book-fanatic hemispheres of my brain. The sassy-grandma trope has been done to death ever since The Wedding Singer’s rapping granny laid down the verse from “Rapper’s Delight,” but Grandma will get some fresh life in those old bones.