★★½ (2½ out of 4)
I find June Squibb irresistible. And apparently so does Scarlett Johansson, who has chosen to star the veteran actress and “Nebraska” Oscar nominee in “Eleanor the Great,” her first film as a director. Only one of them meets the challenge. Johansson will improve with time. Squibb, 89, is perfect in every way. Back in 1959, Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman musical “Gypsy,” in the role of Electra, a stripper who sings, "I’m electrifyin' and I ain’t even tryin’.” She’s still electric, energizing the well-worn banalities of this movie.
In the bumpy script by Tory Kamen, Eleanor must face the ultimate enemy. Not death, that she can handle. It’s loneliness that’s the killer. Eleanor and her fellow 90-something bestie Bessie (Rita Zohar) have been navigating life’s curveballs together in a shared apartment in Florida.
The plot would have to go a distance to even qualify as threadbare. See ‘Eleanor the Great’—and you should—to revel in the lifetime of experience that June Squibb invests in her role. The pleasure of her company is not to be missed.
When Bessie dies, Eleanor loses her moorings. Returning home to New York City seems like a solid option. She can live with her adult daughter Lisa (the sublime Jessica Hecht) and her life-curious grandson Max (Will Price). Lisa thinks her mom should take a singing class being given at the Jewish Community Center. But she opens the wrong door.
Eleanor finds herself at a support group meeting for Holocaust survivors, played by actual survivors. Eleanor is not Jewish, but Bessie was and what’s the harm in telling her friend’s stories as if they were her own? You probably know what the answer to that one is.
Eleanor goes with the flow until she meets Nina (the excellent Erin Kellyman), a college student writing a paper on the group. Everything that can go wrong definitely does. Nina wants to interview Eleanor, of course, she knows a livewire when she sees one. Turns out that Nina is grieving over the loss of her mother, along with her father, Roger, played by “12 Years a Slave” Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor.
The script doesn’t quote the Sir Walter Scott line “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” It doesn’t have to since the sentiment is baked into the movie’s DNA. Lucky for the audience, Squibb is a sorceress who can deliver a cliché as if it had the dew still on it. With only her skill as an actress, Squibb lets us see the Iowa farm girl who came to New York to romp through Coney Island with Bessie and ride the Ferris Wheel with the inexhaustible enthusiasm of youth.
And Squibb does all this with a script that can’t find a consistent tone and a director who can’t shape the material into something coherent. What I’m saying is that the plot would have to go a distance to even qualify as threadbare. See “Eleanor the Great”—and you should—to revel in the lifetime of experience that Squibb invests in her role. The pleasure of her company is not to be missed.