Have you ever seen a film that has wonderful acting but is so utterly depressing that as you watch it, you're tempted to stuff your head into an oven? If not, and you actually want to, try watching "Is Anyone There?"--an incredibly depressing film starring Michael Caine and a young actor, Bill Miner.Edward (Miner) lives in an old folks home run by his parents. Basically, the place is full of people either waiting to die or who are out of touch with reality--a great place for a kid to grow up in, I know. An elderly magician, Clarence (Michael Caine) moves in and at first, he's hostile towards the boy. But the kid is VERY curious (sometime in ways that you wonder if he needs therapy) and eventually the two become friends....and then Clarence dies. Sure, stuff happens in between, but the film is about dying and loss, so this is the main thrust of the film. In addition, the boy deals with learning that his father wants to be unfaithful and he watches a guy get his finger chopped off. All in all, really depressing stuff and although much of this is the sort of stuff we have to deal with, do you really want to see a film like this? Great acting but utterly depressing and awful.

Is anybody there? is a BBC Films co-production, despite the low budget they managed to attract the talent of Michael Caine who plays Clarence, a cantankerous retired magician, who has entered an old peoples home in a seaside town, he does not want to be there and he desperately misses his late wife.At the same time the family run old peoples home has a 10 year old boy called Edward, obsessed with ghosts has he lives in a house where death is common.After a frosty start, Edward and Clarence bond, he learns some magic tricks, Clarence tries to get Edward away from his obsession about the afterlife and gradually reveals the truth about his relationship with his wife.The film is set in the 1980s and it captures the harsh realities of running a small old age retirement home very well. Edward's parents are at their wits end running the home, looking after the residents that they have no time for each other and its putting a strain on their marriage.Edward is deprived of a more normal type childhood because of living in a old peoples home and until he meets Clarence he does not even view them as people. He is wonderfully played by the young actor Bill Milner.Caine of course has the meaty role of Clarence and he can add some pizazz to his performance by adding a few conjuring tricks but towards the end there is the decline in health of his character.Able support is added by David Morrisey with his 'typical' scouse 1980s fashion and hairstyle and Anne Marie Duff as Edward's parents. We have the usual best of British character actors playing some of the residents in the house and although in the main its predictable, maybe a little bleak, the film is carried by its performers but I did not find it a film of too much substance or too riveting.

It's a coming of age story told in an original way, starting with one of the basic premises of coming of age movies - facing death will make you understand life, and than carrying it to the extreme and doing a U turn just before the end is reached. Because if you're 10 years old and you live in an old people's home you're bound to face a lot of death and that should mean you'll do a lot of growing up real fast, too fast to have any time to really understand anything. That's the basic situation all you have left to do is add one more ingredient to the mix and you've got a real gem. This ingredient is the new resident in the house. That's as far as I go without spoilers. But I still want to say that this movie does it in such a reserved fashion that you know it has to be British. It doesn't always work this way, it works perfectly in this case, because of the straight forward approach of the director and because it's done with three superb actors doing roles that would get them a nomination for the academy awards if this film had a better PR man. Michael Cain is as good as I ever saw him Bill Milner is no less impressive as a 10 years old that grew up too quickly and have to re learn how to be a kid again so he can grow up the right way, and Anne-Marie Duff, is completing the trio with a supporting role that is the supporting pillar of the whole story but has no name (in the cast listing) just a family function - Mum.If you get the chance to see it, don't miss this one, it's a keeper.

I had great hopes for this film, but we both decided to go to be 2/3rds of the way through. The cast was excellent, but therein lies part of the problem. Many of the cameo roles lampooned the characteristics of those they sought to portray, in the most grotesquely unsubtle manner. Michael Caine was his usual self, but the irascibility made him too un-redeeming. One looked for likability, and found it cloaked. Which rather describes the whole film. In the end the the excessive morbidity swamps the film. It becomes little more than a self-indulgent lampoon of growing old.There are better examples of the genre, often with much more acute and perceptive humour - something the subject matter badly requires, but which this film sadly lacked.