Is Anybody There?
Michael Caine, veteren actor and now knight of the realm, has begun to specialize in curmudgeonly old characters with hearts of gold beneath their grim exteriors. He wheels out just such a chap again in Is Anybody There?, a Channel4-style movie, choc-full of trademark British humour with a bleak undercurrent. Though in this case, the bleakness is more of a flood.
Ten-year-old Edward (Bill Milner) lives in an old people’s home run by his distracted and unhappy parents. A loner, he’s bullied at school and endures life with a coterie of demented, eccentric or plain nasty geriatrics by developing an obsession with life after death. In this sense, he’s ideally located to conduct research, which he does by shoving a microphone into the faces of the sick and dying in an attempt to trap their departing spirits for an exclusive interview. When a shambling old bloke named Clarence turns up hauling a truck full of magic paraphernalia, Edward is at first dismissive, but soon, in the way of such films as this, the two become friends. It becomes Clarence’s mission in what life is left him, to help young Edward come to grips with the real world, find real friends and put the supernatural behind him.
Caine is in his element as Clarence and Milner’s Edward has just the right mix of sweet and sour. Set in the 1980s in a seaside town, there’s a touch of Billy Elliott-lite about this but with an overlay of black comedy that would not be out of place in an Ealing Studios film of the 1950s.
Supporting cast are uniformly excellent but it’s Caine and Milner that hold everything together. They make a charming pair and 90 minutes in their company is time well enough spent.
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