MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Thank You’ Pays Tribute to Grandma

Probably most people have thought about what it might be like to make a documentary about their family. Jan Oxenberg, a TV comedy writer and performer with three short films to her credit, had the idea more than 12 years ago to make a movie about her grandmother Mae. With funds dribbling in over the years, and with help from her filmmaker friends, Oxenberg finally crafted “Thank You and Goodnight!” (Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex), a sort of quasi-neo-docu-fantasy about not only her grandma but her family’s long-term response to Mae’s increasingly worsening condition--and finally, death--from what was, apparently, cancer.

Oxenberg’s voice-over binds the footage, shot over a 10-year period. She also introduces a cardboard cutout version of her scowling, 5-year-old self, who poses all the questions the adults are too polite to ask.

Oxenberg doesn’t have the kind of filmmaking skills that would bring out her family psychodrama; her approach is so tentative and catch-as-catch-can that, after awhile, you learn to settle for simple pleasures. There have been so many slick docu-explorations of the American family on television that Oxenberg’s clunkiness is sort of endearing. And so is Mae, which certainly helps the movie (unrated).

You may have large reservations about the way Oxenberg nudges her mother and brother and nephews into coming up with psychological revelations, you want her to turn off the camera when she’s filming Mae wasting away in her hospital bed, and you may bristle at the pseudo-Woody Allen-isms in the voice-overs. (Sample: “What is eternity anyway? Do you get to keep your same personality?”) But Mae emerges as a kind of Everygrandma, or at least a Jewish Everygrandma, and Oxenberg’s love for her comes through.

‘Thank You and Goodnight!’

An Aries Film release. Director, writer and producer Jan Oxenberg. Executive producer Lindsay Law. Screenplay by Jan Oxenberg. Cinematographer John Hazard. Editor Lucy Winer. Costumes Elen Lutter. Music Mark Suozzo. Production design Pamela Woodbridge. Art director Kelly Reichert. Set decorator Catie deHaan. Sound Piero Mura. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

Unrated.