SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Blucher One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Prismark10 Is anybody there? is a BBC Films co-production, despite the low budget they managed to attract the talent of Michael Caine who plays Clarence, a cantankerous retired magician, who has entered an old peoples home in a seaside town, he does not want to be there and he desperately misses his late wife.At the same time the family run old peoples home has a 10 year old boy called Edward, obsessed with ghosts has he lives in a house where death is common.After a frosty start, Edward and Clarence bond, he learns some magic tricks, Clarence tries to get Edward away from his obsession about the afterlife and gradually reveals the truth about his relationship with his wife.The film is set in the 1980s and it captures the harsh realities of running a small old age retirement home very well. Edward's parents are at their wits end running the home, looking after the residents that they have no time for each other and its putting a strain on their marriage.Edward is deprived of a more normal type childhood because of living in a old peoples home and until he meets Clarence he does not even view them as people. He is wonderfully played by the young actor Bill Milner.Caine of course has the meaty role of Clarence and he can add some pizazz to his performance by adding a few conjuring tricks but towards the end there is the decline in health of his character.Able is added by David Morrisey with his 'typical' scouse 1980s fashion and hairstyle and Anne Marie Duff as Edward's parents. We have the usual best of British character actors playing some of the residents in the house and although in the main its predictable, maybe a little bleak, the film is carried by its performers but I did not find it a film of too much substance or too riveting.

Ayal Oren It's a coming of age story told in an original way, starting with one of the basic premises of coming of age movies - facing death will make you understand life, and than carrying it to the extreme and doing a U turn just before the end is reached. Because if you're 10 years old and you live in an old people's home you're bound to face a lot of death and that should mean you'll do a lot of growing up real fast, too fast to have any time to really understand anything. That's the basic situation all you have left to do is add one more ingredient to the mix and you've got a real gem. This ingredient is the new resident in the house. That's as far as I go without spoilers. But I still want to say that this movie does it in such a reserved fashion that you know it has to be British. It doesn't always work this way, it works perfectly in this case, because of the straight forward approach of the director and because it's done with three superb actors doing roles that would get them a nomination for the academy awards if this film had a better PR man. Michael Cain is as good as I ever saw him Bill Milner is no less impressive as a 10 years old that grew up too quickly and have to re learn how to be a kid again so he can grow up the right way, and Anne-Marie Duff, is completing the trio with a ing role that is the ing pillar of the whole story but has no name (in the cast listing) just a family function - Mum.If you get the chance to see it, don't miss this one, it's a keeper.

secondtake Is Anybody There? (2008)Yes, this is a sentimental even sappy movie, with clichés of old man befriending young boy and both of them growing and changing as a result. But there is so much done right here, so much magic and sincerity throughout, and such good acting by the two leads, it's hard to fault it. It's like having a wonderful carmel apple and saying it wasn't good, you've had one before.Michael Caine is the headliner, and he's 75 at the time of filming, both looking and acting his age. That's not a marvel in itself, exactly, but it's irable, though for Michael Caine, who acts more than he breathes, it was to be expected. At the other end of this spectrum is the young boy, played by Bill Milner, who is 13 at the time, very smart, subtle, and rather complex for a kid. The background to it all is an old folks home of an old-fashioned sort, charming and simple, a big old house in the country where a handful of aging but still ambulatory sorts keep going one way or another. I don't suppose it's a common thing these days (though it's set in Britain, and I don't have a clue about that, really), but it really seems like a perfect way to spend some waning years if you don't have family, or a vacation home in Arizona, to turn to. They don't have much, but they have each other, and director John Crowley (who did "A Boy") keeps the sentimentality in check without avoiding the true joy of some of the encounters. Caine's character, Clarence, was once a magician, and Milner's character, Edward, is interested in the paranormal. The two naturally overlap, though Clarence makes clear with growing emotional pain that there is no other world than this transient one and that Edward is wasting his time. Edward sees magic as something other worldly and gradually leans the reality of magic, that it's about illusion. Then, as time goes on between the two (and it isn't always sweet, but it's always tender), a new kind of illusion grows in the mind of the old man, and the other world takes on a third meaning, and a useful one to take care of some of his angst.I suppose this is a film with too much feel good warmth and forced complexity (forced in the family who run the old folks home, mostly) to work for some viewers. But if you can be uncynical in the least, and enjoy something simple and heartfelt, tinged with the depths of dying and old age, watch this one. It swept me away.

ianlouisiana "LarkHall",somewhere oop north and accordingly grimly forbidding,is a retirement home run by the parents of a morbid 10 year old boy(Master Bill Milner).Dad(Mr D.Morrisey) is a disgruntled lecher and mum (Miss A.M.Duff)is merely disgruntled with being married to a disgruntled lecher.The son is disgruntled because he has had to give up his bedroom to elderly residents who regularly die without revealing to him the secrets of the afterlife. Enter one Clarence Parkinson,a retired magician,who is disgruntled by just about everything.He is played by Sir Michael Caine who can do "disgruntled" in his sleep. Lots of old British actors with not much else to do dress the retirement home as lovable eccentrics.It's not easy being grey......... The scene is set for a tear - jerker of huge proportions but "Is anybody there?" failed to move me at all. The nearest to a poignant moment comes when Miss Duff sings "A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square" in a small clear voice with an endearingly amateurish guitar accompaniment. Mr Caine's descent into dementia comes on with a haste that might seem almost rude to some and by the end I had found his misanthropy boorish rather than amusing so his ing came as a blessed relief. Clearly meant as a deeply - felt plea for something or other - although I'm not entirely sure exactly what - "Is anybody there?" fails to involve because apart from Miss Duff all the characters are motivated entirely by self - interest. I was feeling pretty disgruntled myself by the end.