Photo by Big Beach Films
As a grieving magician, Michael Caine makes friends with young, ghost-obsessed Edward (Bill Milner) in "Is Anybody There?"
Old people sure are funny, especially when they’re demented. They walk around naked, flirt, sing children’s songs and then — get this — die! (And at the most inconvenient times, too.)
Photo by Big Beach Films
As a grieving magician, Michael Caine makes friends with young, ghost-obsessed Edward (Bill Milner) in "Is Anybody There?"
Set in 1980s seaside England, "Is Anybody There?" tells the story of 10-year-old Edward whose parents have turned their house into a retirement home. While ...
Rating: PG-13 for language including sexual references, and some disturbing images
Length: 92 minutes
Released: April 17, 2009 Limited
Cast: Michael Caine, Bill Milner, Anne-Marie Duff, David Morrissey, Rosemary Harris
Director: John Crowley
Writer: Peter Harness
That’s a cynic’s response to “Is Anybody There?,” a BBC Films production that — to my surprise and pleasure — eventually pierced my cynic’s armor (and perhaps my better judgment). The film is sentimental and predictable, but it manages to overcome the potential deadliness of its “cute” old-folks’-home setting and the programmatic uplift of its theme (end-of-his-rope curmudgeon teaches ghost-obsessed whippersnapper “to make contact with the living”), thanks to the pictorial tastefulness of director John Crowley and, especially, a brace of fine performances.
Michael Caine — looking uncharacteristically scruffy if still rather remarkable for 76 — stars as “the Amazing Clarence,” a retired magician grieving over lost love who has no desire to spend his final days in a quaint British retirement home operated by struggling husband-and-wife entrepreneurs (Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey).
Another reluctant resident of the home is the couple’s son, 10-year-old Edward (Bill Milner, of “Son of Rambow”), an unusual, friendless lad who places tape recorders beneath the beds of dying lodgers in hopes of capturing the sounds of the spirit world in addition to death rattles.
Other seniors are played by such welcome British character actors as Peter Vaughan, Leslie Phillips and Rosemary Harris (Aunt May in “Spider-Man”), as an ex-dancer with a plastic replacement leg.
Set in the 1980s (the soundtrack includes Dexy’s Midnight Runners), “Is Anybody There?” has been needlessly renamed for U.S. advertising purposes from its more colloquial original title, “Is There Anybody There?” The latter phrase is spoken by Clarence during a seance he conducts for Edward’s benefit; the question isn’t heard again, but it hangs over the rest of the film, existential and desperate, as Clarence begins to slide into senility.
Unfortunately arriving in Memphis the same weekend as “Goodbye Solo,” a much more distinctive film about the relationship between an old man and a young person, “Is Anybody There?” is worth seeing for Caine, who makes acting seem effortless, pleasurable and even noble. For Caine, the profession may even be a tonic — he’s such a vital screen presence, it’s hard to believe this could be one of his last lead roles.
“Is Anybody There?” is playing exclusively at the Ridgeway Four.
— John Beifuss, 529-2394
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