Jules

This week's Sunday matinee for me wasn't in quite an empty theater; at least three or four other people enjoyed it with me, and I do say "enjoyed" without fear of contradiction. The movie is directed by Marc Turtletaub, whose previous directing credits are amazingly sparse compared to the number of movies on which he is credited as a producer. It stars Ben Kingsley as an aging resident of a small Pennsylvania city who is starting to get a bit forgetful. He stands up at the city council meeting every week to make the same comments. He occasionally does bizarre things, like leaving the newspaper in the freezer or a can of green beans in his medicine cabinet. He gets impatient when his daughter hints that his mind might be slipping and maybe he should go into assisted living. And then, just to bring her concern onto the front burner, he starts talking about a spaceship crashing in his backyard and an alien (not the illegal kind) crashing on his couch.

Two older ladies are in on the secret, played by Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris. They don't agree on what to call the alien; one dubs him Gary, the other Jules. The little blue fellow, who somehow doesn't look naked despite not wearing any clothing (until the ladies fit him with some tacky T-shirts), has expressive eyes and repeatedly draws kitty cats, but otherwise doesn't communicate much. But while he (or she, or whatever) tries to repair his spacecraft, the Men in Black are getting closer to discovering where the UFO went down.

Despite an itty bitty incident involving somebody's head exploding, it's mostly a gentle, low-tension movie that, I increasingly felt as I watched it, is more about aging and the onset of dementia than E.T. What little you learn about Jules (or Gary) is ambiguous and/or completely daft, like what he needs to restore power to his ship (my lips are sealed) and to what degree he understands what Milton and his lady friends are saying to him. They open up to him, though, and pour our their hearts in a touching way. He ends up making Milton an offer to which the old guy's response suddenly becomes the heart of the movie, what it's all about.

It's a funny enough movie that I heard myself bark with laughter several times. It's a gentle, tender movie that moved my emotions. It's a thinking movie that will leave you feeling and pondering things related to getting old and forgetful. It's a low-key movie whose taste lingers on the palate. And it's a movie whose final scene could stir conversation and debate – like, what does it mean?

Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Sandy (Harris) pours out her soul to Jules, getting choked up about how she's been cut out of her daughter's life. (2) Joyce (Curtin) sings a song for Gary (as she calls him), taking a trip down memory lane to her big-city days in Pittsburgh, while he telepathically intervenes in a crisis Sandy is having at home. It's the deepest this movie descends into horror – and afterward, the way Jules glances back over his shoulder at the elder trio when they agree to be on his side since he's on theirs, is the strongest evidence throughout the movie that he understands when they talk to him. (3) How the three elder humans realize they've landed on earth after a brief ride in Jules's ship.