Review of Grandma (2015) by Mona R — 29 Aug 2015

You know the scene in the movies where a rear view mirror in a taxi shows the eyes of the protagonist, and there's an exchange between them and the cabbie? Four times it's happened to me when the driver says, you remind me of... twice and one of those recently, suggesting Shirley MacLaine and twice I was told Lily Tomlin. Yesterday, the eyes the cabbie saw were Lily Tomlin's in the movie Grandma.

No, there wasn't a remark that she reminded him of me, the shot moved to her remembering a love that made her laugh, and took her to a place where transformation was an option.

Ok, I stood and line yesterday for that movie, telling my friend three times, not to tell me more about a movie, so I won't use up one more word about the plot line. I just want to say that the line waiting for the movie with us, was all wrong, comprised of people who looked like us... over 60 with hip clothes, good haircuts and as my favorite, May Sarton line, "grandmother (and father) faces"... Botox and surgery included. With a title like Grandma and starring a septuagenarian, its easy to figure that the demographic attracted will be the star's cohort, but it's an intergenerational story about love and forgiveness and making mistakes and fixing them or not in high school, in mid sophisticated career or late career later life.

That Grandma is an academic and author gives license for the writers for thought provoking, funny, smart dialog. That the grandchild is a wise B-student who crosses the street after a dog barks from behind a fence creates a vulnerability that made me care about her safety then and her well being as an adult in development. And in between the generations walked a layer at her treadmill desk, doing the things that gave financial life to her family, and complicated relationships with the one who came before and the one following... not so much in her footsteps. The cliché sandwiched generations, rye, chicken and sour dough.

Girls, take your mom's to this movie. Mom's take your mom's to this movie. Mom's take your daughters and grand daughters to this show. I wish I could.

I wish I knew what my mom really experienced instead of what I made up from what I saw and the snippets, the highlights of stories she revealed. I wish I had an opportunity to ask her to tell me the back stories of the turning points in her life.

Reminding me of, The Turning Point, a wonderful Shirley McLain movie, and, of my own turning point, Lily Tomlin's, Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe... which my sister and I saw live on Christmas day the first year my son went off to his father's family to celebrate without me.