Alien tale shoots for the stars, avoids crash landing

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This article was published 17/08/2023 (1095 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Milton (Oscar winner Ben Kingsley), an older man living alone, is in a bit of a muddle. He’s a little confused, a little distracted. He’s starting to forget things. He has one TV remote that changes the volume and another TV remote that completely screws things up.

Oh, and there’s that spaceship that crashed in his backyard and crushed his azaleas.

Scripter Gavin Steckler (a TV writer making his feature film debut) and helmer Marc Turtletaub (a longtime producer who has also directed Gods Behaving Badly and Puzzle) are using a sci-fi framing device that can be clunky and even a little silly. (There’s a downright odd subplot involving dead cats.)

But at its centre, this is a modest, kindly, very earthbound little movie. Jules is a character-driven comedy-drama about aging and loneliness that just happens to involve an alien.

Because Milton is mostly dismissed as an elderly eccentric, his public statements about the spaceship are ignored by the residents of his small Pennsylvania town.

But the spaceship is real, and so is its injured lone inhabitant (actor and stuntperson Jade Quon), a slight, silent, delicately blue-grey humanoid figure.

Milton is matter-of-fact in his approach to the alien, who is dubbed Jules. Milton treats Jules as a very quiet roomie and the two eat together and watch TV, especially Milton’s favourite show, CSI. (“You think it’s going one way, and then, whoosh, it goes another.”)

Two other seniors, Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris, probably best known for her role as Frasier’s fast-talking agent in that ’90s sitcom), and Joyce (Saturday Night Live alumna Jane Curtin), get drawn into the situation, which soon becomes fraught.

News reports on Milton’s TV announce that the government is searching for “a downed security satellite.” There’s an underground facility tracking phone chatter and guys in dark suits knocking on doors.

The trio — whose knowledge of stranded-alien scenarios, they admit, is based on movies — are concerned about keeping Jules safe. “You know what happens to these guys when they fall to earth,” says Sandy, a clear riff on the 1976 David Bowie film. And Jules is itself referencing other movies — E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, especially, Cocoon.

Mostly, though, the story is about universal issues of love and loss. Jules is a good listener, and he/she/they? — gender seems irrelevant with Jules — becomes a sympathetic sounding board for the human characters’ hopes, regrets and memories.

The acerbic Joyce is angry that she’s become isolated and invisible — people would never suspect the rock ’n’ roll life she once lived. Wistful Sandy misses a grown child who has moved away. Milton is negotiating a tricky relationship with his worried daughter, Denise (Zoe Winters), as he fights against fears his mind is slipping.

The writing and direction often feel a little abrupt and rudimentary, but the acting is not. Kingsley, in particular, has moments of real poignance, and Curtin and Harris deliver grounded emotional performances with a gently comic edge.

The veteran ensemble work is so strong, in fact, that the film manages to avoid the pitfalls of the “old people being feisty” genre, which can be so cutesy and condescending. (Think 80 for Brady, Poms and Book Club.)

Sure, there are some UFO-related shenanigans for our three pensioners, even a few hijinks, but Jules is at its melancholy best when it’s slowly and quietly exploring the ordinary, everyday aspects of life on Earth.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.com