This tale of a mute alien who crash-lands into the home of a lonely pensioner played by Ben Kingsley is big-hearted film bound to make you smile, writes Adam Fresco.
When I first heard that Jules is a charming dramedy about a lonely old guy who meets an extraterrestrial, I admit I had a slight concern that it may be so sweet as to justify a pre-screening diabetes test—or at least a visit to a dental hygienist. But whilst Sir Ben Kingsley’s latest sure is sweet, it ain’t sickeningly so. In fact Jules offers an endearing 90 minute, family friendly E.T.-meets-the-star-of-Gandhi tale that will bring a smile to even the most hardened cynic.
It’s a film that plays straight to its audience of, well, let’s just say “people of a certain age.” As in: people old enough to remember cars with windows you had to wind open, and phones the size of bricks. Kingsley stars as Milton Robinson, a lonesome 79-year-old pensioner living in small-town Pennsylvania, suffering from a fast-dissolving memory. His grown-up daughter Denise (Zoë Winters) threatens pops with two words he can’t bear to hear: “assisted living.”
Denise’s opinion of her father’s declining mental state isn’t helped by his announcement that an alien spaceship has crash-landed in his garden. An alien who Milton has named Jules, and now hosts in his home. This news doesn’t go down well with the local council either, who think old Milton is a few eggs shy of a dozen. But Jules is real and turns out to be a vegetarian who’s rather fond of sliced apples, and is sincerely sorry his crashed craft damaged Milton’s ornamental bird bath.
It’s no snide putdown to say Jules is a feelgood movie. It’s not cynical. It’s not afraid to look at the bleak, lonely life experienced by some old folk, or the fear of mental decline, or ungrateful grown-up kids, or regrets people with children might feel about not being the best parent possible. It’s this self-awareness that saves Jules from being sentimental melodramatic mush. That and, of course, Kingsley and his awfully over-the-top hairpiece.
All that crazy alien-living-with-an-old-kook stuff adorns a small, perfectly well-observed tale of a lonesome retiree scared that he’s losing his mind. But there’s hope for Milton, in the form of his neighbours Joyce and Sandy, delightfully played by experienced comedic actors Jane Curtin (an alumni of Saturday Night Live) and Harriet Sansom Harris (perhaps best known as Bebe from Frasier).
Aided by his neighbours, Milton hides his out-of-this-world homestay from the sinister folk in black suits who turn up in town, presumably wanting to pack Jules off to Area 51 for experiments. Or maybe the old folk have watched too many sci-fi movies? Either way, the three elderly friends bond over their mutual desire to protect Jules from jeopardy.
Despite being draped in a latex suit, and mute, Jade Quon manages to emote just the right amount of pathos and kittenish inquisitiveness as the titular E.T. to garner audience sympathy. Whilst it’s a refreshing change to see an alien created with old-school practical effects rather than computer-generated imagery, it’s the three main players who keep us invested. What could so easily have been a patronising and deeply annoying tale, of sad oldies buggering about, is lifted by the lead actors, who lend their characters a frail, empathy-drawing dignity.
Beneath the science fiction trappings, Jules is a tale about isolation incurred by old age. As health deteriorates, and children, now adults themselves, flee the nest, what’s left? In a society where the old are ignored, or dismissed as irrelevant, perhaps the only solace is to seek out one another? As Milton, Sandy, and Joyce bond over their shared desire to protect the stranded extraterrestrial, their fear and loneliness is replaced by a renewed vitality and faith in the power of friendship.
It might be a trite moral, but this tale is warmly human and genuinely amusing. There’s plenty of gags, including a subtle callback to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial—Milton’s argument that the council amend the town’s motto to “A Great Place To Call Home” echoing E.T.’s famous line “E.T. phone home.” Unashamedly sentimental, with a plot as ridiculous as that garish hairdo, Jules underneath it all is that rarest of modern movies: a heartwarming tale about people of a certain age finding comfort, community, and companionship in one another.
