Grandma

An elderly former poet and retired academic (Lily Tomlin) takes her wheezy old 1955 Dodge out of storage and hits the road to help her pregnant granddaughter (Julia Garner) raise the money for an abortion. Writer-director Paul Weitz tries to give his movie a veneer of indie-flick honesty, but at heart it's as slick and trivial as his American Pie (1999), and just as specious. Weitz is lucky Tomlin signed on; her prickly performances distracts us from the symphony of false notes in the script, and she makes this puny little movie worth watching (well, more or less). Tomlin is aided in this by the many star cameos (Judy Greer, John Cho, Elizabeth Peña, Sam Elliott, Marcia Gay Harden) who parade across the screen like guests on a TV variety show or the celebrity blackouts on Tomlin's Laugh-In in the 1960s. J.L.