JULES - Mark Reviews Movies

Jules, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 10, 2023

Generally, nobody pays much attention to older folks, and when they do, it's not with much seriousness. That's the basic premise of both the comedy and the melancholy of Jules, a delightfully weird film about an old man and the alien whose flying saucer accidentally crushes his azaleas. He's more upset about the flowers than he is curious about what's likely humanity's first encounter with extraterrestrial life.

The old man is named Milton and played by Ben Kingsley with an absolute rigidity of personality. Milton has his normal routine: waking up early, watching television, making trips to the local grocery store as necessary, and attending every single town council meeting to bring up the same two complaints.

One of those is about the small Pennsylvania town's motto, "A great place to call home," which he worries might confuse people and make them think they should make phone calls into town when they want to call their actual home—or something like that. Grammatical nitpicking aside, Milton's second usual complaint, about the absence of a crosswalk on a long and relatively busy stretch of road, is much more reasonable and a matter of public safety, and maybe if he led with that one, the mayor and the town councilors might take the other one a bit more seriously.

Then again, does anybody really want to listen to what a curmudgeonly, stubborn old man has to say about anything? That idea is put to the test when Milton is awakened in the middle of the night by a loud boom and flashing lights coming from his backyard.

Sure enough, there's a UFO—no longer flying, obviously—embedded in Milton's garden, having crash-landed there. Milton is, well, unperturbed by the sight, apart from the fact that this incident has ruined his precious flowers and made the prospect of replacing them impossible. He'll worry about that later, though, and if not for the eventual emergence of little gray alien from the ship a couple days later, Milton might have just spent the rest of his days with the spaceship there.

There is, of course, another possibility here, since Milton's mental faculties are increasingly failing him these days. His daughter Denise (Zoe Winters) is quite worried about that, especially after she finds a can of beans in her father's bathroom cabinet, but Milton is the kind of man who dismisses such worries, claims that he just got a little confused, and insists that he doesn't need to see a doctor. It'd be best if his daughter just drops the subject, but more than a bit of doubt has come into our heads, now. Is the UFO real, as unlikely as that may seem, or just a figment of Milton's failing mind.

The most admirable quality of Gavin Steckler's screenplay is that it fully embraces the ridiculous nature of this scenario, as Milton helps the alien with a blanket and a glass of water, invites the entity through the back door, and makes the extraterrestrial a most welcome guest of his home. The alien, eventually named Jules (Jade Quon), is the perfect guest for Milton. Jules doesn't ask questions or, for that matter, speak. The alien just sits in silence, watching TV with Milton and eating apples, and any questions about the nature of the extraterrestrial are answered when Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris), another regular at town hall meetings, shows up unannounced and has a more proper reaction to seeing a being from another planet.

All of this is very funny, because director Marc Turtletaub simply plays the absurdity of the script with straight-faced sincerity and allows these characters to exist in a subdued way. Milton, Jules, and Sandy—who gives the alien a name, despite Milton's insistence that his guest doesn't need one, because, well, the alien hasn't offered one and their contentedly lazy bond doesn't require things like names—just hang out together. Eventually, Joyce (Jane Curtin), a self-involved older woman who also frequents the city council meetings, joins the group. Meanwhile, Denise worries that her father's mind might be slipping more, on account of rumors of him talking about his alien houseguest, and a shadowy government agency is listening in on phone calls in the area, looking for the spacecraft and its pilot.

Beneath all of this and gradually coming to the surface of the story is the sense of how thoroughly, desperately lonely these characters are. Joyce lives to remember and tell tales of her youth in the city. Sandy has a daughter, whom she loves and completely supports but who is too busy trying to win the favor of her wife's disapproving mother to visit. Both Harris and Curtin display solid comedic instincts and present an equally solid emotional foundation for each of these characters.

We know Milton's personality and troubles, but eventually, he reveals regretting how he treated a son who has since disowned him and how frightened he is of his immediate future, aware that something is wrong his mind. Is it any wonder these three would connect so easily and completely with Jules, who might be the loneliest creature in the universe at the moment and who, in a scene of implied but particularly gruesome humor, actually sticks up for them when no one else will?

The whole of Jules operates on its own eccentric and disarmingly sweet wavelength, giving us a very silly premise but treating it with a genuineness of intent and a generosity of heart. Yes, it's a decidedly weird film, but that only makes liking it so much easier.

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