User reviews

'TALLULAH': Four Stars (Out of Five)

A Netflix original drama flick; about a homeless girl, that kidnaps the baby of a neglectful mother, and then bonds with the mother of her ex-boyfriend, who she turns to for help. The film stars Ellen Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard and Evan Jonigkeit (it also features a cameo by Zachary Quinto). The movie was written and directed by first time feature filmmaker Sian Heder (a veteran writer of the popular TV series 'ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK'). The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics, and Netflix viewers alike. I enjoyed it a lot more than I first thought I would.

Tallulah (Page) and her boyfriend, Nico (Jonigkeit), have been traveling, and living in their van, for years. When Nico suddenly leaves one day, and takes the couple's money with him, Tallulah goes to Nico's mother, Margo (Janney), for help. When Margo wants nothing to do with her, Tallulah begins searching a nearby hotel for food (and money). That's when a partying mother (Blanchard) hires Tallulah to babysit her young child. When the neglectful mom returns home wasted, and passes out after cursing at the child, Tallulah decides to take the baby. She turns to Margo for help, telling her it's Nico's child. The two reluctantly bond.

The film's story seems odd, and I had doubts it would be that interesting (especially after first starting the movie), but it actually turns out to be a pretty involving film. Page and Janney are both excellent in the leads, especially Page, and the characters are both extremely flawed but likable. Heder also seems to be a pretty awesome new filmmaker to watch out for; who seems to do a great job of writing women roles. After this, I'll definitely check out her next movie.

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One nice thing up front: this movie gets how New York City works when it comes to giving tickets (though I don't know if it would've gotten a 'boot', more likely it would've been towed, but I digress).

Tallulah is a prototypical example of an independent film that features two very well known actors (at least to some, I'd think Ellen Page is and Allison Janey may be hit or miss for some, still, even after all these years), and *feels* like a first time Sundance-festival-bound indie film. But it's not necessarily a negative, or something to be wary of, in the case of this story. A lot of that does come down to the actors, and (mostly) realistic reactions to how the story goes into one 'oh s***' moment after another and, again, it comes down to the choices the characters make which can be desperate, foolish, but also for their own good in a way.

Tallulah is wandering from place to place being basically if Juno several years later was a hobo and lost a lot of the snappy dialog (Page in slightly similar attire, though grungier, more "street" to give it obnoxious quotes). Her man friend Nico runs off on her for some reason or another (he wants to go home to his mom, she doesn't want to do that, and during the night he splits - oh, and why he split in the first place is and isn't clear). So she finds his mother's apartment in New York city, she rejects him, and the she ambles about into the Waldwick hotel where she stumbles upon a drunken socialite-dilettante (Tammy Blanchard in a performance that may be overlooked but she gives this blonde dummie a lot more depth than you'd expect, some of that's in the writing). She has a baby, and Tallulah is tasked to take care of her while she's out for the day, thinking she's a housekeeper. Later this blonde lady stumbles drunk into bed, Tallulah feels wrong about leaving a crying baby all alone and kidnaps her.

Good premise and a strong beginning to a story that doesn't give us a protagonist who is necessarily 'likeable' or 'sympathetic' just because we're told to like her. She's complicated, she's lost, she explains later on in the story briefly and just enough so that her faults go back to a place of abandonment (she does turn to Nico's mother, Allison Janey, for help, and she reluctantly agrees making the spine of the movie). What I liked is that the story gives some things to explain motivations for stuff - why Janey's character Margo can't let go of her past relationship which ended in betrayal (oddly enough Janey once again being the 'beard' to a gay man in a marriage like on Masters of Sex) and why Tallulah can't stay still for very long - but the actors are given a lot of room to play with, to find the characters on screen so that we can also relate to them well enough. So when something "quirky" like Tallulah pulling down all of Margo's ex's paintings off the wall to 're-paint' at first seems to turn out badly and then becomes a bonding scene, it works because we can believe these people in it.

In other words, this is a movie that has some light crime-elements to it with the kidnapped baby, maybe in its way a hybrid of a New York intellectual comedy-drama and a slight, a little bit, of neo-noir, and it mostly works if you like Page and Janey (oh and some nice character people like Zachary Quinto as the 'new' guy for Margo's ex, David Zayas and Orange is the New Black's Aduba pop up and the latter even gets some good character motivation, nicely done writer-director Heder). It also has that, um, slightly odd touches that at first are acceptable and then pop up at the very end: floating in a dream can work once, but twice, I'm not so sure. And there are certain story contrivances that do come up, mostly in the last third or act or whatever, and it does make you realize this story's coming to a wrap-up in some ways that do and don't make sense.

But for all of these misgivings Tallulah does function as a quality dramatic film with a few light touches about what it means to have a lack of options or resolve, to really be caught up in existential dilemmas that matter, whether it's having a baby that's not yours to become close with or to let go of a marriage that didn't work when YOU are a writer about marriage (yeah, that's here as a thing). If you asked what I thought I'd say 'I liked it, it has heart, and... that's about it, and it's enough.'

This film is the reason I love movies! Beautifully written and superb actors bringing interesting characters to life. Ellen Page excels in this probably her best role to date.

I don't think the plot summary of this is anything truly original or unpredictable, but boy do the writers do it really well. They do a fine job of developing the central characters and do a good job of making us empathetic towards everyone, which is always important for a film like this. You have to find a certain balance where your characters' flaws come shining through very noticeably, but where their redeeming qualities also become more noticeable as the film goes on. In this case they do. The entire cast is quite strong, with Page, Janney, and Blanchard giving some really powerful work here. It's great to see them working at this capacity and all should receive at least some attention come awards season.

This film has a lot of swell ingredients but it was left on the stove for a little too long and has become overcooked.

Writer/director Sian Heder has crafted a film about women, or more specifically about being a mother; the desire to be one, the difficulties, the loneliness, and what qualifies one to do it. It's sad and funny and recognisable all at once.

Elliot Page plays the eponymous Tallulah; a woman who has decided to opt out of society's responsibilities and restrictions and lives a life of petty crime from her van. Through a series of events and impulsive decisions, Tallulah ends up kidnapping a baby and shows up at the door of her ex-boyfriend's Mom, Margo (Alison Janney) claiming the baby is Margo's grandchild.

After all that first act running around set-up, Tallulah settles in to observe the three women impacted by this; Tallulah, Margo, and Carolyn, the biological mother played by Tammy Blanchard (last seen by me to chilling effect in "The Invitation").

All three women are coping with their sudden, unexpected new maternal situation; grand/motherhood, or it's wished-for absence. This is fertile (no pun intended) ground, and it's a shame the movie doesn't have the confidence to sit with the significance of these unintended consequences for these three women - too much time is spent on the busy-work of investigation, dodging police, and worst of all, the possibility of romance.

The film recognises the situation it has put these women in, but instead of reckoning with how they respond, it gives them suspicious detectives, and amorous doormen to spar with. But the meat of the matter is not in how others now see them, but in how they see themselves.

One particularly silly sequence has Tallulah turn manic pixie dream girl and teach Margo something by encouraging her to mess up the expensive paintings in her apartment she doesn't even like. It's all so superficial.

Luckily, the material is elevated by three brilliant actresses committing to their characters. Page and Janney (in their third collaboration following "Juno" and "Touchy Feely") are wonderful. Page brings a believable burgeoning maturity as she realises she may actually be up for this mothering thing after all. Janney excels at portraying someone closed off, and almost against her wishes, is allowing herself to open up again.

The real MVP though is Blanchard as the drunk who suddenly finds she desperately wants her child back. She takes us from potentially depressed new mother using alcohol to cope, to a woman seeing herself through others eyes for the first time in a long time and not liking what she is seeing.

You might come for Page and Janney but it is Blanchard you stay for, and I regretted the small amount of screen time the three had together.

The film is smart enough not to judge it's characters - they may do despicable things but the script always offers us some insight into why they did them.

If it sometimes indulges that desire a little too much (better to hint at or show problematic home lives than to give characters monologues where they spell it out), it's also wise enough to not hand us pat answers by the end. We have a fair idea of where things might go, but issues are by no means resolved, and that was the right place to leave it.

The final scene is so gratingly on-the-nose though that it almost ruined the whole thing for me, but I recalled the penultimate scene and felt connected to these strong but struggling women once again.

When Tallulah first knocked on Margo's door looking for her boyfriend,Margo's son, who she had not scene in 2 years, because he could not stand the pressure of his parents failing marriage, she was not as acceptable to what looked like a homeless person standing in front of her. Than Margo gets the divorce papers, she still has not seen her son, and piling on to her downward spiral, her turtle dies, So when Tallulah knocks on the door again, this time with a baby she kidnapped from a Beverly Hills housewife, and she's passing off as the kid she had with Margo's son, Margo acts reluctant at first, but after everyone she cares about leaving her, she could not help but to give Tallulah shelter.

Tallulah is a good role for Ellen Page, she drove this vehicle into an excellent performance. The movie opens with a love scene between Page and the actor playing her boyfriend, and she does a nude seen for it. At that moment you realized that Ellen Page was all in and was going to give everything she got to being Tallulah and you can feel that throughout the film. She interacted with other cast members well. I especially love the moments between Tallulah and the baby.

Tammy Blanchard gave a great performance too as a mother who let some first world problems get in the way of parenting her child. The point was driven home by some great performances by Uzo Aduba(Crazy Eyes from Orange is the New Black) who plays a child service agent, that you would think be more sympathetic towards a woman whose child was kidnapped being she is a mother of two and is pregnant, but she sees a woman thinking only of herself. It does not help that the lead investigator looking for her child (played by David Zayas, who I loved in Dexter) Kinda feels the same way.

Allison Janney handles her performance greatly as well. She seems like a stuck up snob at first the way she talks to people like her doorman, who only once to be (more than) nice to her, but as her story unravels you can see the wall she's putting up come down and you make that connection.

The narration is near perfect, as everything is set up flawlessly, making the story very fluid. Nothing ever slows down and takes away from the purpose of the movie.

Great cast executing a great film to watch. Good one, Netflix!

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Tallulah, or Lu as everybody calls her, lives in her truck with her boyfriend, Nico. Sick of her fear to commit to anything, he leaves her, so she decides to go look for him at his mothers house. In the process she comes across a toddler neglected by its alcoholic and careless mother and she ends up kidnapping the baby. She then pretends it's hers and Nico's baby and Nico's mother starts taking care of her. A bond is slowly created between the two women.

It's a pretty good movie that I would recommend. you're left wondering during the entire movie how and if that Impossible situation is going to be solved. Even if the theme is pretty "dramatic" the actors, by giving a really good and convincing performance, give the characters something not pathetic, not illusional, but deeply human. At the beginning of the movie, the main character is not at all lovable. But the more you learn about her past, the more you understand her and her behavior. We learn to appreciate her the same way that the mother does.

The metaphor of the gravity, that starts in the first scene of the movie till the end, to describe somebody's attachment to something is relatable and adds something to the story. The entire movie feels like a coming of age story where Lu needs to learn to stop running away and the mother to start holding on to something.

Ellen Page is excellent as a homeless young woman, cynical, hard-bitten and foul-mouthed, who abducts a toddler from its rich, neglectful mother and makes friends with her ex-boyfriend's estranged mother--under the guise that she's a single mom raising this woman's granddaughter all on her own. A hard movie to like, but also a movie impossible to dismiss, "Tallulah" is an impressive production purchased by Netflix that has many things to recommend it, not the least of which is an array of fabulous performances from the ladies in the cast. Unfortunately, filmmaker Sian Heder is a much better director than she is a writer, and the relationship between Tallulah and her boyfriend--a crucial element in the story--is not convincing (the problem is with his character, who simply does not ring true). Page is reunited with her "Juno" co-star Allison Janney, and the two have a special rapport that is, by turns, angry and bitter and lovely and moving. However, the arc of Janney's character isn't as profound as its meant to be (for instance, she's terrible and nasty to her soon-to-be-ex husband, who left her for another man), and the last portion of the plot is gummy and indecisive.

My wife and I both found this a small masterpiece.

The writing is enchanting.

The players are superb. Ellen Page never ceases to amaze. She is one very talented lady.

Allison Jenney's work is always worth watching, never more so than in this flick.

I found the Carolyn part played just a wee bit over the top.

At a time when far too many movies are made for a young audience devoid of aesthetic sensibility, it's movies like this that rekindle love of film in the mature movie-goer.

Movie is good, but I disappointed at the writer who wrote some stupid context about India saying its poor country and only poor people live. Also talks about a woman who is sitting around dirt etc. But the leading characters is a homeless lady and roams around in a dirty truck. India has been there for more than 5000 yrs with rich history, natural resources and wealth. It's a land of diversity and knowledge. Whereas America is built on poor immigrants from Europe and I admire the advancement it made barring few stupid writers like these. So my sincere request is whenever you are referring a country do the basic study and don't deregote other counties.

I have always been scarce to rate a movie 10/10. However I can not describe how truly deserved that number is. I stumbled upon this movie very casually and came out devastated, touched and changed quite honestly. Now this may seem extreme (and I share the passion of mocking others that take reviews to the next level), but this movie contains everything I love about movies and does so with ease. Let me start with Ellen Page. Wow. Ellen has always performed magnificently, but this movie in my humble opinion has defined her as an actress. Allison Jenny, destroyed my heart and plunged me into the character (Margo) that she took on so elegantly. Never before have I screamed, cried and laughed in a single scene, at the computer, then I did in a certain scene in 'Tallulah', thanks to Allison. I would seriously encourage any movie lover anywhere (since it seriously is a movie for all), to watch this movie if they are in the mood to smile, laugh and cry. 'Tallulah' is a masterpiece and I would define it as an experience. An experience none should live without.

Tallulah isn't a comedy or maybe I have another sense of humour and I didn't get this one. It's a drama, the genre I seldom choose when it's my turn to pick an evening movie. But it was my wife's turn so I abide. Tallulah isn't a bad movie though. I did enjoy following this story. The crime element keeps you interested, wondering when the truth will be unveiled. So a tiny bit of suspense as well. Ellen Page (sorry I won't call her Elliot as she was still Ellen Page at that time) did a good job playing the main character. Good cast, quite a few actors known from being in series rather than movies, but all very convincing. Not a bad watch.

It is a little bit Comedy a lot of drama and no Romance , but the story is really good. -The question is was she good was she bad ? Yes it was wrong but ... , -Elliot Page was great and over all a good easy watching movie.

Did anybody notice the similarities between the two films Gimmie Shelter and Tallulah? Obviously we had to separate story lines but to strikingly similar main characters. I won't spend the time getting into the plot, it is surely worth anybody's time to give this flick a look. A few elements stood out to me. Page's character was fairly well developed as was Allison Janney. Briefly, Janney and Page compliment each other perfectly as they both share a similar conflict-that being their inability to cope with their own loneliness. Tammy Blanchard had an absolutely disgraceful part in the film, and the writers wanted to bring some degree of sympathy to the audience because she was with a deadbeat husband and an alcoholic who later 'feels guilty' about her daughter going missing. Other than those few things, the movie was descent, not too melancholy, but was a good attempt at a comeback for the Juno girl.

The cast in this are great. That's what made it watchable. The script is pretty bad. The actions are immoral, the characters say and do bad things and there's no point to take away from it. I've noticed that many movies portray this bad mother character, however, far fewer of them portray the terrible father, from the neglectful ones to the ones who run away from parenting altogether, to the abusive ones. This mother is pretty shocking, as is the protagonist. There's no good outcome at all. That poor child. Pretentious, film festival wannabe rubbish from writers who probably think they're pretty clever. They're not. Again, it's worth watching for the acting. The cast made the film work, hence the 6.

How can the world exist any longer, I ask every day. Such stupidty, such brutal lack of unawareness of who we truly are...it's beyond heaetbreaking. God help us all.

I was stunned by how beautiful this movie was. I didn't really expect this much, and seeing a weak IMDb score made me want to review this film. All women should watch this film. It disregards all standard stereotypes we have about mothers, middle aged women and how we relate to each other. Some reviewers talk about it being predictable, Id say its the opposite. Aside from the general outline of events in the film, no valuable aspect is predictable. Although I cannot speak for the male audience, I am worried it plays too much on female emotions and values to be able to be a hit for both genders. But I might be wrong. It contains Oscar worthy performances and its screenplay is brilliant in itself. It reminded me a lot of the feeling I got stuck with after watching American Beauty.That feeling is still there though. Don't know about this one.

WOW! After a long time I saw a movie where I couldn't take my eyes or ears off a single frame.

The story as such isn't anything new. Each character is something we've seen before. The magic of this movie is in the way the story is told. The dialog, the characters, the acting, the pauses, and the music all comes together in just the right amount of drama, never going overboard in this highly emotional story.

It has brilliantly portrayed and written flawed characters. Ellen Page is simply phenomenal as Tallulah, a young woman living on the fringe with a golden heart but a messed up mind. Allison Janney as the scorned, sad, bitter wife also with a kind heart makes you feel for her. Tammy Blanchard as an unworthy mother, and a extremely flawed woman, yet with a good heart underneath manages to make you sympathetic towards her despite her apparently unforgivable flaws.

Oh and how I LOVE Uzo Aduba! She steals her scenes in a small part. She's simply amazing.

I also loved the end. It wasn't all hunky dory yet each character finds something worth fighting for and worth living for, despite their hopelessness.

I accidentally stumbled upon this movie thinking that I selected a series on Netflix. By the time I found out it was too long for an episode I was actually disappointed to find the film was almost to an end. There's some great acting in the movie and it genuinely made me tear up at the end. As far as the story goes, I feel like it was strong , yet missing in-depth explanations of certain aspects. It leaves to guess about some things, which isn't always bad, but in this case I just feel like I watched part of a potentially interesting story. So 10/10 for acting, 5/10 for captivating story and 0/10 would recommend to friends, because I never recommend movies that didn't completely blow my mind.

Being a senior citizen as I am, it's easy to get stuck in the past watching old familiar movies. A couple of years ago I decided to "not go there" and see what the young crop of actors have that I might be missing. One of my first "new" favorites was Ellen Page.....a powerhouse of a actor in such a small package. I believe Tallulah is about her 10th movie I've seen her in and have never been disappointed! You know a movie is top notch when you forget they are all acting and the story becomes real in your mind. Such is Tallulah. A powerful story that makes you feel happy and sad while laughing and crying. A very endearing movie that I'm sure I'll repeat watch!

I loved this movie. The story is gripping, the characters interesting with authentic intensity. Slowly and with a fine tuning people are brought together who ultimately all have the same issue: Lack of Love. The story shows what happens to us when Love is missing, what crazy behavior can result from this and how desperately insecure we are wondering around in this world then. The emotions like disappointment, resentment, hurt and anger are very well displayed without disturbing the viewer too much. Also the small parts, like the scenes between Margo and the doorman, are precious. It shows that Love is in every corner of this world, we don't have to go to big lengths to find Love. It is everywhere. Just our wounds and hurt from the past blinds us to see it. Wonderful acting, heartwarming and at times also a funny. Really worth seeing.