A teenage girl’s biggest mistake leaves her with only one person to turn to; her Grandmother. “Grandma” stars Lily Tomlin as Elle, who has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend (Judy Greer) when Elle’s granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) unexpectedly shows up needing $600 bucks before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets. It’s pretty well known for this critic that Lily Tomlin is a national treasure, but what surprised me about this film was that it serves as proof that Tomlin’s best days are still ahead. Lily has always been a bravado of comedic timing and talent, but her role as Elle shows some emotional damage and despair for a woman who is literally witnessing history repeat itself with the same mistakes that her Granddaughter is making. It’s nice to see that these two women from different generations share such an emotional bond, where their secrets go no further than their own conversations. Tomlin really stole the movie in such a short amount of running time. The movie clocks in at a meager 72 minutes, but i fully support this decision by Director Paul Weitz, as the script isn’t very loaded. The movie stays grounded in the same direction for the entire movie, even so much as surprising me with it’s dramatic tones instead of a dark comedy like the trailer suggested. The film even rounded up a couple of surprises along the way to keep the pace moving smoothly, even without the progression in dilemma that the two ladies are facing. The artistic choices for the film pay off wonderfully, with a lot of uncut long shots, creating some impressive line readings of long dialogue. It’s all a very handheld style of filming, but it works best in that way when Tomlin is producing her wonderful brand of sarcastic wit. Aside from Tomlin and Garner, the film has some nice surprise cameos from Marcia Gay Harden (Sage’s mother), as well as Sam Elliott, a longtime friend of Elle with a couple of haunting secrets of his own. The most enjoyable scenes for me were the ones with Tomlin and Elliott going back and forth. The running joke of the film is that Elle is a lesbian, but we can still feel some kind of awkward romantic magic between the two, even if a kiss leaves more to be desired. If anything could use improvement, it’s in the script’s choices on inept time documentation for the relationship of Tomlin and Greer. We never really get enough time invested to understand where their relationship all went wrong. It’s not of major importance, but the movie is stolen by Tomlin, yet we get more screentime about Sage’s life. “Grandma” is short but very sweet. It shows us that there is no boundaries that we won’t go for family, even if that boundary forces us to deal with history repeating itself. Go for Tomlin’s charms, but stay for it’s warm message.

7/10