CINEMA: Is Anybody There?

One of Britain’s favourite old-timers and new rising stars come together in this immensely warm and affectionate observation of ageing, alienation and death. If that sounds too depressing by half, the movie is anything but a downer, being full of humour and light and wonderfully uplifting life.

It’s the 1980s and young Edward (Son of Rambow’s Bill Milner) is less than ecstatic that his mum and dad (Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey) have chosen to turn their house into an old people’s home whose inmates have a habit of dropping off this mortal coil before he can capture the sound of their souls leaving their bodies on his dodgy old tape-to-tape recorder. To add insult to injury he has to give up his bedroom when new resident Clarence (Sir Michael Caine) arrives. After initial hostile manoeuvres against the old man, Edward starts to actually like hanging out with him when he discovers Clarence was once a famed magician, The Amazing Clarence, and can teach him lots of cool tricks to impress the bullies at school. Soon, the lonely and slightly confused old man and the rather stroppy schoolboy have become bosom buddies who get into all sorts of scrapes.

Young Bill Milner may be just a whippersnapper, but he proves an impressive foil for Sir Michael and their scenes together are full of banter and joshing and brilliant dialogue – when Clarence discovers the friendless Edward has an unhealthy interest in death and séances he says to him “why don’t you join hands with the living?”

Sir Michael is now a formidable acting force and he gives another brilliant performance here showing the utter horrors of getting old – all jibbering simpletons wetting themselves is how he puts it. But apart from the performances it is the absolute peach of a script that stands out here. It manages to steer the right side of sentimentality because it isn’t all happy, cheery, chirpy niceness, but is spiky and uncomfortable and sometimes even downright nasty. This is this year’s Venus and deserves just as much praise.

Dee Pilgrim