Heder’s script is narratively ambitious with this mission, centered on a stolen baby and three moms who are bad in ways different to this week’s mainstream comedy release “Bad Moms.” Ellen Page plays Tallulah (shortened to “Lu”), a gutter punk living on the road with her boyfriend Nico (Evan Jonigkeit), sharing a lack of personal responsibility and connection to the world outside of their van. When he ditches her after deciding that he doesn’t want to slum it anymore, Lu heads to New York City to scrounge for food, and get money from Nico’s estranged mother Margo (Allison Janney, in a career-best role). Margo too is isolated from the world, living alone with a pet turtle in an apartment owned by the husband she’s separated from, but unwilling to officially divorce.
While stealing room service leftovers from outside hotel rooms, Tallulah is recruited by a disaster of a housewife named Carolyn (Tammy Blanchard) to watch her baby while she goes out to desperately impress a man. In a fantastic introductory scene, Blanchard broadcasts the dangerous nature of a mother who has lost focus of everything outside of herself. She whips up a tornado of stress in just one interaction with Lu, ping-ponging between prepping her body while not caring whether her naked baby makes a mess on the carpet. When Carolyn passes out later in the evening, Tallulah takes the baby to her van for a safe sleep; when the police are in the hotel lobby the next morning, Lu heads over to Margo’s place, and claims that the baby belongs to her and Nico. Margo reluctantly hosts Lu and her "new" granddaughter, but begins to relate to Tallulah in ways surprising to both women.
As Heder is most of all interested in making time for Lu and Margo’s growing bond, her script has a couple of cringing contrivances to keep the police at bay, like Margo not seeing Lu’s face on the news; even a stolen baby functions more like a narrative device. “Tallulah” becomes unexpectedly conversational, touching upon the type of privilege it is to have and care for someone, through two people who have no immediate answers. The dialogue can spell some of her ideas out pretty clearly, (like when Lu says, “I think it’s better to not be needed”), but that's a minor complaint—not enough films have so directly engaged motherhood as a philosophy and not just a character trait.
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