Is Anybody There?

Most great actors when they feel they have amassed a distinguished body of work tend to rest on their laurels and just churn out pretty bog standard stuff in their later years. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro seem to be doing it of late with "Hide & Seek" and "88 Minutes" not to mention their joint effort "Righteous Kill" while Laurence Olivier long ago pioneered the process with such beauties as "The Jazz Singer" and "The Betsy". Michael Caine however seems to have gone the opposite route. While his long career is dotted with some minor classics it is also flooded with some major turds. In fact between "Sleuth" (1972) and – "Sleuth" (2007) there has been "The Man Who Would Be King" –"Hannah And Her Sisters" - "Mona Lisa" but there has also been "The Hand" – "The Swarm" – "Jaws: The Revenge" - "Blame It On Rio" (a lot of)etc. Recently though Michael Caine clearly feels he has his money made and can afford to be to be a lot more selective in his choice of roles. He has had a consistent run of well received performances in well-received films and has become an integral part of the revitalised Batman franchise. His latest choice is possibly one of his best performances. In "Is Anybody there" he plays "The Amazing Clarence" a former magician who is forced by increasing dementia to move into a nursing home, very much against his will. The nursing home is also home to 10 year old Edward whose parents own and run the place. He is just as unhappy to be there as Clarence is and inevitably a prickly friendship develops between the (very) cantankerous old man and the (very) cheeky young boy. Edward is fascinated with death and ghosts, hardly surprising given his environment and Clarence teaches him magic tricks to try and pull him out of this morbidity and encourages him to make friends with kids his own age. Indeed Edward does start to impress his class-mates with his magic tricks (particularly the ones involving fire) and he decides to have a birthday party at the home – with Clarence as the entertainment. But Clarence's Alzheimers is getting worse and he is becoming more and more forgetful, when it matters most. This is a beautifully acted film by both Caine and Bill Milner as Edward. Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey perform solidly as the parents while the residents of the home are played by a number of established faces including Leslie Phillips as a man with a passion for telling very dirty jokes – particularly to members of the clergy. The film is full of dark humour but is never patronising and frequently very moving. While Clarence's decline is a bit rapid - more of a plummet into full senility than a descent - it is still very well handled and ultimately leads to a very touching finale.

What a pure delight this film was.

Maybe its because I also grew up in the 80's (albeit not in an old folks home) that the twinge of nostalgia attached to this film drew me in more than others. The decor was instantly recognisable and reminiscent of my grandparents house!

I am a stereotypical British Michael Caine fan so I am unashamedly biased but all that considered I genuinely believe this to be one of his shinning moments.

The script was well structured & the direction natural - I believed in those characters, in fact I almost felt like I might have met some of them a long time ago.

Funny, touching, charming and yes most definitely a bit sad but sad in the nicest and most uplifting way possible.

Was this a comedy, was it a drama??? I'm not sure, what I am sure about is that there aren't enough films like this.

If you like run of the mill Hollywood films you wont like this – if you like films with a touch of humanity that make you think a little, go see it - trust me.

The magician is a curious fellow; he spends his days and nights ceaselessly going over his tricks and illusions, making sure all creases and seams are hidden from view so that he may able to dispel reality, if only for a few moments. For those on the other side of the fence, the magician can be seen either as a craftsman dedicated to his art, or as something of a ray of light that hints at something else; something more than the dirt in the ground and the worms at our feet. Yet, for all the glimmers of hope and magic that the illusionist creates in the wake of his act however, there is that ever-looming cloud of certainty that plagues his own reality—standing behind the curtain, the magician is aware of the wires, the trap doors and the contraptions set up to make the mundane seem a little more fantastic; to the man with the rabbit in his hat, the world is a playground where one can briefly create an imaginary world where magic lives, but unlike those that he tricks, the magic never truly lives on once that curtain falls.

Somewhere in the audience is a young, bright-eyed boy—his name is Edward (Bill Milner) and he lives in an old-folk's home with his mother (Anne-Marie Duff) and father (David Morrissey) where death is just as common as a hot meal. Rather than believing in the Easter Bunny and Santa Clause, Edward instead has a genuine infatuation with the afterlife, making sure never to miss an episode of Arthur C. Clarke's ghost hunt programme on terrestrial TV rather than play with LEGO; that is, until one day when a new resident takes up a place beside him and switches the channel over. The new guy is a man riddled with regret and cantankerous spite, his name Clarence (Michael Caine), previous occupation—you guessed it—magician. What so inevitably starts off as a hate-hate relationship between young paranormal enthusiast Edward and old, embittered and left-in-the-rain by ghosts of the past Clarence however soon blossoms into something a little more reflective and intertwined than any of them would have imagined.

The resulting story is something we've all seen or heard before, but perhaps with enough sombre nuances to render it something a little more cinsightful and uplifting than most of these stories. There's certainly no denying that Is Anybody There, on a purely ostensible, story-wise front does nothing new at all, but through development of these two characters (and others) who are brought to life wonderfully by the cast involved, the feature overcomes its rather tepid and pedestrian plot in favour of offering a subtle but pleasant character drama. Of course, there are issues throughout the feature which undermine all the good that is done throughout (this is most prominently realised in the final act which renders one plot-line through a banal, contrived resolution that directly clashes with the central story that ends on a much more refined note), yet much of these lay in the background, easy to overlook in favour of the movie's much more engrossing and charming elements.

So while at its heart a humble and restrained piece of cinema that doesn't necessarily break any new ground, it is this simplicity and obviously intentional subtlety that makes Is Anybody There a treat rather than a bore; director John Crowley acknowledges that Peter Harness' screenplay isn't one immediately pandering for big reactions from audiences, and he plays to this sense of realism and dignity throughout without sacrificing Harness' themes on life and death that trickle throughout. Make no mistake, you certainly couldn't be blamed for missing a small portion of Is Anybody There's reflections on life, but neither should you miss the rest—instead, Crowley and Harness craft a feature that is simple in its design but larger than life in its messages and inner substance; it may not be perfect, no, but it's got enough humanity in there thanks to the cast to make it worth while, even if you think you've seen these life-affirming rites-of-passage movies before.

• A review by Jamie Robert Ward (http://www.invocus.net)

Not knowing what to expect of this film we were pleasantly surprised, relieved in fact. One critic had rated it as 'morbid' – just what we needed on a bank holiday afternoon – when in fact it was quite uplifting.

There was no waiting around, Cowley took the audience directly to the sitting room of the elderly peoples home. You didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the antics of some of the elderly residents – an ex-dancer, a drunkard, war veteran – who, as interesting as they looked, were never discussed in much detail. They were 'props', clichés or as Edward would put it, 'pains in the backside'.

Indeed, we are made to see the residents as Edward did. Their antics are in fact, annoyances, enough to drive a wedge between him and his parents. Edward, who celebrates his 11th birthday in the film, is focused solely on finding out what happens after death. He played the part beautifully with such naivety and sincerity.

The arrival of Clarence to the home would change Edward more than he would think and vice versa. It was nice to see the relationship grow between the two. For the very first time, Edward would begin to look upon one of the residents as a grandfather figure, someone who would teach him new tricks and to live for the living, not for the dead. Not only did Clarence become a grandfather to Edward but also a friend. There are some great snapshots throughout of the two of them.

Overall, it was a nice film that taught us to live for the moment and that regrets can eat you up inside. It also reveals truths about residential homes: 'you live all your life on your own and then someone thinks it's a good idea to put you with complete strangers'. We must remember that despite having their age in common, elderly people are all unique and should be treated so. Despite being set in the 1980's, the colours and styles all depicting this era wonderfully, these 'lessons in life' are as true today as they were back then.

Small films such as "Is Anybody There?" usually aren't there, at least as far as box office impact. This one may have a chance at some return because of Sir Michael Caine's role as a retirement home denizen in 1980's England. Caine infuses the ex-magician with a bit of movie magic—cynicism baked with pathos and one of the greatest cinema voices ever.

He teaches an equally eccentric 10 year old boy some tricks, and the little one amuses us and Caine with his project to capture the death throes and after activity of dying residents.

That this bleak landscape of death and despair can be lightened by these two interesting characters is a tribute to the magic of a movie actor and movies themselves, small as both may be next to colossal American blockbusters.