Directed By Marc Turtletaub

Starring – Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, Zoe Winters

The Plot – Follows Milton (Kingsley) who lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town, but finds his day upended when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. Before long, Milton develops a close relationship with the extra-terrestrial he calls “Jules.” Things become complicated when two neighbors (Harris and Jane Curtin) discover Jules, and soon the government quickly closes in.

Rated PG-13 for strong adult language

(5) JULES | Official Trailer | Bleecker Street – YouTube

POSITIVES

With aliens being all of the talk in current world affairs, along comes “Jules” to cemment their place once more in the land of cinema, but this time without the device of a hostile world takeover or expanding galaxies to articulate the way they’re displayed. Fresh off of the heels of his 2019 contemporary classic, “The Farewell”, Turtletaub once more supplants a refreshingly poignant honesty in the many universal themes that he conjures here, with none being as thematically relevant or expansive as that of the crippling state of dimensia that plagues his ailing protagonist. Milton’s condition wields authentic approaches in everything from the way his condition is treated amongst the general public, to the way it debilitates Milton’s own daily routine, feeling like he’s continuously standing in place, while everyone and everything in a small town moves around him. So along comes the later-named Jules the alien, and its clear the place of this extraterestrial couldn’t come at a better time, with a more meaningful purpose, as the alien is not only muted to serve as the ears for people with dimensia who just need someone to listen to them, but also designed with human-like features in bold eyes and subtle bodily movements, to constantly maintain the audience’s focus towards him. Tonally, the film experiments effectively with nearly every end of the spectrum, but finds a comfortable consistency in the subtleties of dry humor, which it articulates with a few meticulously placed curse words, or the talents of its primary ensemble. It also experiments with some genius levels of editing, which push the punchlines to certain conflicts one scene after they’ve conjured, leading instead to a much higher effectiveness in pay-off that proved its creativity was transferred seamlessly from the pages of script it sprung from. Because of this deviation to formula, Kinglsey is once more a gravitational force at the age of 79, inspiring Milton with a gentle warmth and frail psychology that constantly exudes the empathy designed to invest in his character, all the while affording Kingsley the freedom to escape seamlessly into the role. In addition, Curtain and especially Sansom Harris are meaningful additions by Kingsley’s side, with the former toeing a line of tender trepidation that leads to several valued insights about her character, as well as an unexpected Lynard Skynard musical number, and the latter garnering a rich psychology of her own in a connection to the audience, which makes her a wild card of sorts in the growing evolution of her character. Beyond the performances and themes, the film also maintains urgency in the narrative while clocking in at a brief 82 minute run time. While this does lead to some hinderances with a couple of arcs that don’t receive the proper attention towards properly fleshing out, its pacing does force the film to waste little time in the manufacturing of its primary plot, with Jules crashing to Earth at around the ten minute mark in the film. Lastly, while subtly influenced in the confines of its script, I loved the established setting of this small town in Pennsylvania, which feels ripe with a sense of community where claustrophobic surroundings create an obstacle of its own in keeping Jules hidden from the public eye, but instead invoke a deeper and hard-hitting observation about elderly treatment that feels every bit believable in human naivity as it does pessimistic in its long-term solution towards such.

NEGATIVES

As previously conveyed, the 82 minute run time does create some issues with the development of the storytelling and this plot that ultimately kept this from being one of Turtletaub’s best, among a career of so many favorites already. For starters, the occasional convenience is used to bridge the gap where the film isn’t able to properly develop communication or interaction between Jules and Milton, instead settling for a drawing to convey insight towards the alien’s plan, which feels like a far stretch for a trio of senior citizens to properly understand, with little to no struggle in summoning such a solution. In addition to this, what little time that the film does have is occasionally spent poorly towards influencing the proceedings with a tired government antagonist in entity, which feels borrowed from literally every alien movie that we’ve ever seen. If this subplot were brought along with a main character at the forefront of its rendering to subdue some of the seedy surroundings of government offices, where the meandering of the score grows tedious with darker tones, then maybe I could take it more seriously as an element of urgency to Jules race against the clock to get his ship running once more, but as it stands it’s continuously borrowing from an already limited plate of time, leading to very little in the progression of its conflict that justified the extent of its necessity in the first place. Finally, the third act of the film feels like the evidential weakness for me, especially with an ending and resolution that even at 82 minutes feels like it runs about five minutes too long. There’s a perfect shot in this movie that I won’t spoil, which screamed to be the closing image right into the post-movie credits, but instead the film drowns on for a few more scenes for no other reason than to pad the run time, leading to such a spontaneous credits scroll so sudden that my corresponding audience and I just sat there for a few minutes, until it inevitably faded to black, during which we got up and just left. It’s an anticlimatic afternote to an otherwise solidly sincere experience, but one that would be even better if it properly rode that momentum to the finish line at just the right moment.

OVERALL
“Jules” is a sweetly charming and soberly sincere story about the poignant elements of aging and the relieving of loneliness, which sometimes springs in the least likely of places. Turtletaub here has crafted a warmly touching love-letter dedicated to the memory of his deceased father, and in doing such emphasizes the urgency of that relationship, which, like its alien landing, are here for a good time, but not a long time.

My Grade: 7/10 or B-