Fresh and Exciting

Fantastic!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Tracing a story between an old man and boy should induce narcolepsy. Although Caine takes the plaudits, and he is a good character actor, this works, and can only really succeed with Milner, who is very good. He is angry and confused but once he settles on the friendship with Caine he shifts and the relationship between the two opens out.It is a bit predictable but it works with the actors, the interchange between them is critical and in this case it does as Caine and Milner react with each other, making it possible for the audience to read their relationship.The other actors, some respected names, are not used as well as they could have been. There were other stories to tell there and its missed. The parents are fine, seen through the boy's eyes.The setting and mood is very well evoked: all dusty and damp with the second best of everything.

"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 passing 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.

This movie reflects on what's been going on in my heart for a while - interaction of the generation which has been passing away and our (grand) kids. What always irritated me was a culture which promotes an image of young and restless and, at the same time, discarding those who brought them up.I never believed a convenient wisdom that the elders are more comfortable in the retirement homes, or in the surrounding of their own. There is Baywatch on wide screen HDTVs, while retirees are conveniently shoved away behind the "active adults" curtains!

A pleasant sort of film, and I'm never really going to criticise anything with Michael Caine in it am I? Likewise I'll never hear a word against the lovely Anne-Marie Duff, who always gives Gromit a run for his money in the acting-by-eyebrows-alone stakes. How she finds time to write all those poems I'll never know.But I just can't get a theme together for my review other than some shot at "if you ever wondered where all old actors go – it's a film about an old folks' home in Yorkshire". Yes, so soon after Clint's moribund hero I now have Michael's grey-stubble–and-all retired magician. Do you think I am being drawn to them? Seriously though, this is undemanding stuff, yet somehow uplifting to see all the where-are-they-nows. But – and if for no other reason, this is why you must see this film at some point – prepare yourself for an excellent centrepiece scene with a stage guillotine.Ron (Viewed 12May09)