Grandma (2015)

Directed by: Paul Weitz

Written by: Paul Weitz

Starring: Lily Tomlin, Julia Garner, & Marcia Gay Harden








Before I begin my review, I should probably explain what Grandma is about, since I know there hasn't been as much marketing for this as there is for mainstream films.

This independent movie stars Tomlin as Elle Reid.  One day Garner's character Sage, Reid's granddaughter, comes to ask her grandmother for $630 in order to get an abortion.  Reid doesn't have the money, so her and Sage go all over town visiting various people from their old friend, to the baby daddy, to past loves.  Like Tomlin in real life, Reid is a lesbian.  And by being gay she has made a lot of mistakes and has developed this "screw you" kind of attitude.  This makes it difficult to find the money to get an abortion.  Old feelings come up and Reid has to figure out if getting the money is worth more than her pride.

That was a crappy summary, but only because it was not that great of a film.  Without the strong names behind this film, I doubt it'd be a movie.  The film was a little all over the place and the pacing dragged.

When I had taken a screenwriting class, one of the basic rules was to keep the audience wanting more by always having a question for them to ask.  The only question that was constant was if Sage was going to be able to get an abortion?  The film felt like it would try to come up with more questions by getting Elle and some other character together to cause some tension from the past, but it was not explained thoroughly, so it caused me to lose interest.

Another basic rule of screenwriting was to have the characters develop of time.  Let the audience see that they have changed.  Sage changed.  Elle's daughter Judy (Harden) changed.  But the main character, Elle, to me seemed to have overall stayed the same from when she first began.  And she's the main character!

Also, another problem I had with the film besides the writing was...well actually it probably still has something to do with the writing.  In the film, Elle is an author of famous poetry books, or something.  So I'm not sure if their intention was to create the film like a book, because they tried to provide chapters in the film.  After a specific scene with a character, there would be a transition of a number and a word on a white background to explain the next character that was about to appear.  I didn't think that was necessary and it kind of took me out of the moment.

It was not a bad film.  It just had nothing to keep me interested in continuing to watch it.  But I watched till the end, 3 popcorns.