Sundance 2015 review: Grandma - Lily Tomlin cranks it up to the max as a ranting poet on the road

Lily Tomlin adds heart, soul, and, naturally, tons of comedy, to the role of Elle, a cranky old poet who breaks up with her girlfriend (Judy Greer) on the morning of a very eventful day in Grandma, the latest from About a Boy and American Pie director Paul Weitz.

Elle’s granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) arrives unexpectedly, looking for $630 (£418) to pay for an abortion because she doesn’t want to tell her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), an uptight lawyer who thinks her daughter is messing up her life, about the procedure. Elle doesn’t have the money, so she and Sage trek back and forth across Los Angeles trying to round up the cash, while Elle rants and disses everyone who comes in her path.

The entire cast is great, including Greer and incidental characters like Laverne Cox as a tattoo artist, Sam Elliot as Elle’s ex-husband, John Cho as the owner of a coffee shop, and the late Elizabeth Peña in one of her last roles as the owner of yet another coffee shop. Coming in at under 90 minutes, Grandma is fun and brisk, though sometimes the encounters seem a little pat, and Elle’s grief about the death of her partner a year earlier is way overdone. That’s why it’s key to have such a stable of acting talent, ones that can get laughs out of even the cheesiest of dialogue.

But possibly the greatest thing about Grandma is that it passes the Bechdel test with flying colours, better than any film I’ve seen recently. The men are only ancillary characters and the only people that matter are women. This is really a story about three generations of women and how they interact with each other. It’s about mothers trying to cope with their daughters and overcome their personal demons so that they can have meaningful relationships with each other. And it’s about Lily Tomlin being a hilarious crank. It’s a pleasure to watch her.