Tallulah (2016)

Number Rolled: 45

Movie Name/Year: Tallulah (2016)

Tagline: Life can be a real mother.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Length: 111 minutes

Rating: TV-MA

Production Companies: Maiden Voyage, Ocean Blue Entertainment, Route One Entertainment

Producer: Mark Burton, Paull Cho, Chris Columbus, Eleanor Columbus, Ged Dickersin, Sophia Dilley, Ken H. Keller, Russell Levine, Christopher Lytton, David Newsom, Elliot Page, Heather Rae, Caron Rudner, Michael Tennant, Todd Traina, Charlotte Ubben

Director: Sian Heder

Writer: Sian Heder

Actors: Elliot Page, Allison Janney, Tammy Blanchard, Evan Jonigkeit, Felix Solis, David Zayas, Uzo Aduba, Fredric Lehne, Evangeline Ellis, Liliana Ellis, John Benjamin Hickey, Zachary Quinto, Maddie Corman, Eden Marryshow

Stunt Doubles: Jen Egan, Dina L. Margolin

Blurb from Netflix: While searching for her ex-boyfriend, a young drifter impulsively kidnaps a baby from a neglectful mother and pretends the child is her own.

Selina’s Point of View:

Dramas like this are very hit or miss with me.

With the wrong pacing or bad acting, this kind of drama puts me right to sleep. In the first five minutes of Tallulah, I thought that was the kind of film I was in for. Luckily, I was wrong.

I guess I should have known better. The writer/director, Sian Heder (Dog Eat Dog, Men of a Certain Age, Mother), is great. She’s responsible for writing several episodes of Orange in the New Black (2013-). If you haven’t seen that Netflix original, I urge you to give it a shot. I still haven’t seen the new season, but I loved the rest of it.

I digress.

Tallulah is very badly described in the blurbs on Netflix and IMDb. I can’t blame Netflix for theirs, though. The story is just way too in depth to be broken down to a single sentence. IMDb, however, makes it seem like the mother of the kidnapped child is the main character. She’s not.

This film wound up being heartwarming and interesting. It wasn’t just about a kidnapped kid, it was about people from different walks of life interacting. It was a look at the way circumstances change a person’s perspective.

I liked it, but it’s not likely a film I’d watch again. Mostly because it takes a lot for me to want to sit down and watch a drama. However, it was still really good. Worth a sit-through if it’s the kind of thing you’re into.

Cat’s Point of View:

Monday’s movie, Mercy (2016), must have been a fluke. I say that because Tallulah is everything the other film wasn’t and is a far better representation of the quality movie I’ve come to expect from a Netflix Original.

Talk about a rollercoaster of feels, though. This movie gave me all of them. I laughed, cried, gasped in maternal concern, got angry, deflated in relief, and so much more.

I can’t even imagine the soul-wrenching experience of my child going missing. OK, scratch that. I don’t WANT to imagine it. It’s one of my deep seeded fears, and I know I’m not alone with it. My daughter used to give me minor heart attacks while inflicting karma upon me by hiding in the center of clothing racks in stores. (I did the same to my mom. Kids and the things they think are ‘fun,’ right?) That moment where your heart stops because they’re not where you thought they were, I swear, takes a few years off your life.

This movie captured that emotional response in spades.

Allison Janney (Get on Up, The DUFF, The Girl on the Train) and Elliot Page (Inception, Into the Forest, Flatliners) made magic here. This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together, and I imagine that added some extra depth to their performances here. I’m actually interested in going back and seeing some of their former joint projects that I might have missed.

I loved that this film wove the light-hearted and imaginative moments into the fabric of the tale rather than being heavy-handed with the gut-punch feelings. The movie has great wit as it plays with light and shade.

This is definitely a quality movie I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend; and I may just give it another watch at some point.

Languages

Speech Available: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

Subtitles Available: English, French, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 84%

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 69%

Metascore - 63/100

Metacritic User Score – 7.5/10

IMDB Score – 6.7/10

Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 3.5/5

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 4/5

Movie Trailer: