Not even the formidable, skeptical presence of Lily Tomlin can keep Grandma from dabbling in pandering, granny clichés. (I guess we should have been warned by the blunt title.) Tomlin plays Elle, an acerbic academic who breaks up with her much younger partner (Judy Greer) on the same day that her teen granddaughter (Julia Garner) shows up on her doorstep pregnant and needing money for an abortion. The extremely contrived screenplay by writer-director Paul Weitz then sends the pair on a wacky journey trying to round up the cash. (Sample stop: the would-be father’s apartment, where Elle takes a hockey stick to the kid’s crotch.) Tomlin is undone by much of the dialogue (“I could break a hip!”), even when you get a sense she’s putting her own brash spin on it. Weitz, meanwhile, wants the showcase scenes to simultaneously hit notes of tragedy, farce and pathos, but the movie can’t strike that extremely difficult balance. Particularly off-tone is the film’s handling of abortion itself, which it doesn’t take seriously until the convenient climax, when it very much does. I’ve liked most of Weitz’s films (even In Good Company and American Dreamz) and fully believe Tomlin could anchor her own movie. They just didn’t manage to make it work here.
