Tallulah

Once the audience realizes the main plot of Tallulah, the movie really becomes a question of who is going to get in trouble for this, because in this (a little bit ridiculous) movie, there is just no way it'll end with the child being returned to her mother while also none of our main characters getting in legal trouble. That said, I do think this movie does a good job at keeping the audiences attention even though the ending is pretty predictable.

As I've already mentioned, the main plot of this movie is that this homeless girl kidnaps a baby girl from a woman that she deems to be an unfit mother. I think the way Ellen Page plays her character is phenomenal. Her drive to survive and live on her own contrasted with how she feels responsible to save this child is really brilliantly shown through Page's body language. Without any dialogue the audience learns that Tallulah (Ellen Page) pretty much knows she's in deep shit from the second she leaves with the kid. A large part of this movie aside from the kidnapping is the characters learning about themselves and each other.

The acting was pretty amazing and easily the most impressive part of Tallulah. I've already talked about how the plot isn't that remarkable considering how predictable it was, but the driving factor for me to keep watching this movie was Allison Janney and Ellen Page. Their chemistry is always so good. I love them both, they are both such amazing actors and together it makes something that is so unique and cool and low-key funny it makes for an amazing movie. The boyfriend character, played by Evan Jonigkeit, was unremarkable to say the least. I didn't dislike him but he was definitely lost in the mix of a kind of frantic plot and the amazing performances of Janney and Page.
There aren't that many ways this movie could have ended. I think the way it did end made sense and was a good way to wrap everything up...but it was also a little goofy. Ellen Page gets caught in the end (obviously) and in her the last scene she's in the back of a cop car and the cops basically praise her for what she did because they also believe the mother she stole the baby from is a bad mom, which is totally unbelievable because she literally kidnapped this child. She broke the law and took someone else's kid, so the idea that the cops that picked her up would basically tell her 'good try' is a bit ridiculous in my mind.
I like that the message of this movie is trying to be larger than the pure fact that Tallulah was trying to do a good thing-- I think the tie-in with Allison Janney and how, at the end, it's shown that Tallulah does make a difference in her life, offers more substance to the audience than if it just ended with Tallulah being arrested. It's shallow to think the main point of this movie is the baby-stealing because it's obvious that that action is just the catalyst for the characters to learn a lot about themselves and each other and it's a great plot device for character development.

Tallulah is a great movie that showcases the talents of Allison Janney and Ellen Page. The plot is a bit nonsensical at times, but really, the conflict is only so that we can learn more about our characters and see a new unique relationship develop between them. It's weird to think the reasons to watch this movie aren't really for the main plot, but I feel like this is a better movie if the majority of your attention is on the elements aside from the main conflict.