Movie Review - 'Is Anybody There?'

Is Anybody There? Starring Michael Caine and Bill Milner Directed by John Crowley Rated PG-13

Michael Caine is a consummate actor. Where he ranks all-time is impossible to say, because Caine has always been open to doing absolutely horrible films for money, whereas you'd never have to worry about Daniel Day-Lewis at the top of his game making Jaws: The Revenge. And in spite of those terrible movies, can you honestly say Caine is ever boring in his performances? He's played everything, most of them a couple of times, and to his great credit, he continues to not just deliver knockouts every now and then but also to raise the bar for everyone in his profession. Caine understands, perhaps better than any other actor, that people go see Jaws: The Revenge, Blame it on Rio, and Miss Congeniality, and that even those roles help him prepare for great work in The Quiet American and his new film, Is Anybody There? Caine portrays Clarence, an aging magician who has come to live out his final days in a family owned retirement center. It's small, understaffed, and mostly miserable. For everyone. That includes Edward (Bill Milner), a restless kid who has become obsessed with tracking ghosts in his house once its residents shrug off their mortal coils. You've seen movies; you know where this is all going. The trick is making the relationship between Clarence and Edward something greater than the plot, which we just pointed out needs very little illustration. Writer Peter Harness crosses the paths of these two characters rather well at the beginning, but it misfires when it's time to pull the trigger. Wish it had a better ending. It's still arresting to watch Caine show off vulnerabilities and confidence in nearly equal measure. A man nearing the end of the line and a magician who still thrills himself in pulling off even the smallest illusion. And again, somewhere in that mess of bad movies from the 1980s, Caine tucked away something he used here. Bet on it. The real discovery is Milner, unless you saw him last year in Son of Rambow, in which he was also a real discovery. Just now entering his teen years, Milner does what the great kid actors do: He's able to portray emotions beyond his own experience. But, unlike a Dakota Fanning or even a Haley Joel Osment, you don't ever feel like you're watching an alien. Milner is a kid through-and-through, but somehow has the instincts to make up the rest. There is no harm in coming up short to an actor like Michael Caine. Almost everyone has. Not Bill Milner. Perhaps nobody expected it to work this way, but the kid absolutely steals the movie from Caine. And even a giant mechanical shark couldn't do that.

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