Supergran: "Thelma"

As faster fingers than mine have pointed out, Thelma - light comic folderol from writer-director Josh Margolin - runs in unexpected parallel with January's slam-bang actioner The Beekeeper. A scam is being perpetrated on the elderly; the protagonist sets out in pursuit of those responsible. One of several crucial deviations is that where The Beekeeper's Jason Statham was out for retribution, Thelma's June Squibb, ninetysomething mascot of a film industry that honours its elders by putting them out to work, is merely seeking restitution for the $10,000 of savings she's handed over. Another is that she's observed setting out on a customised mobility scooter belonging to pal Richard Rowntree, who's just been cast as Daddy Warbucks in his care home's production of Annie. Cue another episodic senior citizens' road trip, closer to the antics of Rita Moreno and co. in last year's 80 for Brady than to Richard Farnsworth in David Lynch's The Straight Story. Here, we're being offered a mix of the daft and the prescriptive. The attempt to frame Thelma's progress as akin to the action movies she watches from her sofa proves sputtering at best; this is all too clearly a middle-of-the-movie-road anecdote - reportedly drawn from Margolin family lore - stretched to feature length via a titteringly low-speed chase. Thelma and her rechargeable steed are pursued in turn across L.A. by her concerned family (daughter Parker Posey, son-in-law Clark Gregg and grandson Fred Hechinger) in scenes that, in large part because of Posey's presence, fleetingly reminded me of 1996's fun The Daytrippers. But every now and again matters grind to a halt for an interaction intended to make a serious point about how confusing the Internet can be for silver surfers, the dishevelment they can fall into if overlooked or the condescension with which certain sections of society still view the elderly. Fine, except splitting the action between the heroine and her loved ones feels like a tacit admission that Thelma as written here can't quite carry a feature in her own right: Squibb, recently heard as the voice of Nostalgia in Inside Out 2, is deployed as little more than a mascot for old age, a novelty gonk plonked on the film's dashboard as it meanders forward. The underemployed Rowntree is good alongside her, and your reward for staying the course is Malcolm McDowell effing-and-jeffing as the man behind the scam, but otherwise it's a matinee proposition that just doesn't have the comic or dramatic juice in the tank to prevent its target audience from dozing; when Thelma declares late on that "this whole thing has been ridiculous", you may find yourself nodding in agreement, if you aren't also nodding off.

Thelma is now playing in selected cinemas.