“Time passes – that’s for sure” – an Eileen Myles quote that opens the film Grandma and could have just as easily come spilling from the churlish mouth of Lily Tomlin’s titular character. After all, Tomlin’s Elle Reid is no stranger to her own passing time. In her words, “I’m rapidly approaching 50” (Elle’s deadpan is matched only by her sense of irony – Tomlin has around rounded her third quarter-century.) Her thick sheen of sarcasm is persistently cutting and deeply riotous and between the sharp writing and Tomlin’s pitch-perfect comic timing, there’s many good reasons to see Grandma. Forget that Tomlin’s name will be thrown all up and down the Oscar buzz aisle because award or no, her presence here is absolutely aces.

Grandma begins with a tiff between Elle and her much younger girlfriend Olivia (Judy Greer). Elle labels Olivia a mere “footnote” in her padded relationship memoirs before severing relations and shooing Olivia from her house and her life. If Elle were forced to describe herself in the moment, I’m sure she would coin the term “sardonic twat.” Her granddaughter, Sage (Julia Garner), reports, “Mom says you’re a philanthrope.” She draws her face into a scrunch and quickly corrects herself, “A misanthrope.” But that’s not quite an accurate description. Sardonic twat fits much better.

Elle’s indifference to social norms and political correctness is her sentimental shortstop, her emotional lifeguard that pulls her from engaging in legitimate feelings. We discover that her indifference to public perception is not only a part of going through the motions of getting old. Rather, her once long-term relationship with a woman is hinted at throughout the film, but discovering its nature is part of the experience so I won’t spoil that here.

Briefly after cutting her affair with Olivia short, the aforementioned Sage shows up on her doorstep looking for a $630 handout. She’s coy at first about the nature of her requested offering but it soon comes to light that she got knocked up by her also-ran boyfriend Cam (Nat Wolff). With Cam coming up short on funds the day she’s scheduled for her abortion, Sage is hot on the hunt for the means to have her fetus vacuumed out.

The odd couple embark on an journey to find a “reasonably price abortion,” a sojourn that has them frequenting the grounds of former business relations, ex-flames and even a feminist cafe called “Bonobos”. In their quest, Elle rubs shoulders with tattoo artist Deathy (“Orange is the New Black”’s Laverne Cox), her wintry daughter Judy (Marcia Gay Harden) and a former love interest, Karl (an excellent Sam Elliot) from back before she had the courage to come out as gay.

It wouldn’t be right to call the LGBT elements of director Paul Weitz‘s Grandma subtle but they are handled in such a human, nonchalant way that to describe the picture as “LGBT” would be a misrepresentation of sorts. And maybe this is due to the fact that the lines between LGBT and non-LGBT films have begun to blur in 2015 when same-sex marriage is legal and LGBT activities are no longer sanctioned from mainstream cinema. (For the most part.)

If there were a crossroads between LGBT and non-LGBT films in which the political issues of the first are effortlessly injected into the non-issue nature of the other, Grandma may be that film. There’s a levity to Grandma that escapes most comedies dabbling in drama, much less those that intend on making a point, and save for Tomlin’s scene shared with Sam Elliot which provides some real weight to the entire affair, the whole thing is quite blunt about what it is. If you choose not to accept any of the lifestyles depicted onscreen, that’s simply your problem and neither Weitz nor his film intend to sway you.

Partitioned into chapters with names like ‘Ink’ or ‘Apes,’ Grandma runs a brisk 79 minutes. Before you know it, it’s already over and yet manages to hit on everything it needs to and gets out before it’s overstayed its welcome. And though Tomlin is certainly the star of the show as the titular heavy-cursing grams, the film itself is a beautiful little distraction that handles some weighty issues with careful footing while never coming up short on rich belly laughs.

CONCLUSION: Juggling droll comedy with some heavy issues, ‘Grandma’ is a crowd-pleasing, skillful blend of humor and drama with an absolutely winning performance from Lily Tomlin.