Jim Erickson’s Movie Review: Is Anybody Out There?

Three noncommerical movies are scheduled between tonight and next Wednesday night. Tonight at 8:00 p.m., the Cinema Alfrewsco series begins with the superclassic screwball comedy "It Happened One Night," with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, director Frank Capra, and screenwriter Robert Riskin, all winning 1935 Academy Awards; the showing is at 8:00 p.m., outside the Brickyard, 129 North Rock Island. Friday at 7:00 p.m., Cowtown's new Visitor's Center will show "Bloody Dawn: The Lawrence Massacre," with discussion with director Ken Spurgeon. And Tuesday, the Blank Page Gallery hopes to have its new projector that has been so desperately needed for the past month, to show "Kes," a 1969 British movie about a working-class boy and his pet falcon, notable for realistic lack of sentimentality, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

And commercially, we have a satisfying "little" drama about death, life, and human relations in "Is Anybody There?," starring Michael Caine.

I had so much of my usual trouble with any dialect but standard English that I had to see "Is Anybody There?" twice. But I was glad I decided to stay for the second showing, because a more acoustically advantageous seat helped me find that it is a much better movie than my first struggle with it had suggested.

Practically everything in it relates to the general theme of death and how to relate to it. Ten-year-old Bill Milner is audiotaping everything he can get around the old folks home his parents run, which seems to be devoted to last-stage Alzheimer's patients, which makes it a good place for his study of death, the near-death experience, and the afterlife. Along comes Michael Caine, sent by the British social Services, who is eager for death, perhaps to the point of attempting suicide. Eventually, their mutual interest leads Milner and Caine into a relationship that changes both of them in ways that are fairly predictable, though the ways this comes about are less so. The stages of development are logical and clear, but there are neat little ironies in which something that pushes one character forward bounces the other one back. The story may lack climaxes of great excitement, but remains interesting almost to the end, which does seem to flounder a little after you might feel it's mostly over.

Even the second time through, I missed Caine's statement that if he had lived again he'd like to come back as a badger; so I'll risk damaging the movie by telling you that. A man I talked to in the lobby said he thought a transition or two had been left on the cutting-room floor, and I wondered about Milner's relations with his classmates at school; he seemed to be unnecessarily isolated from everybody everywhere. There are a few other quibbles; nobody seemed to regard "Is Anybody There?" as a masterpiece. But everybody, including me, seemed to like it. I wouldn't mind sitting through it again to see if there are things I'm still missing. For one thing, I'd like to test my theory that at one point Caine is attacking Milner so unsuccessfully that he goes clear over Milner's head and brings him closer when he's trying to drive him away. Writer John Crowley and director Peter Harness may be subtler than their apparent sentimentality suggests. In any case, I thank them in advance for what I suspect may be one of the few grownup movies of the summer.