Crew
Director – Marc Turtletaub, Screenplay – Gavin Steckler, Producers – Michael B. Clark, Andy Daly, Debbie Liebling, Alex Turtletaub & Marc Turtletaub, Photography – Christopher Norr, Music – Volker Bertelmann, Visual Effects – Ingenuity (Supervisor – Philip McGuire), Special Effects Supervisors – Mark Bero & Fred Kraemer, Jules Designed by Howard Berger & KNB EFX Group, Prosthetics Created by Designs to Deceive (Supervisor – Joshua Turi), Production Design – Richard Hoover. Production Company – Big Beach Productions/ADI/Inner Child Productions.
Cast
Ben Kingsley (Milton Robinson), Harriet [Sansom] Harris (Sandy), Jane Curtin (Joyce), Jade Quon (Jules), Zoe Winters (Denise Robinson), Aubie Merrylees (Dave), Anna George (Dr. North), Cody Kostro (Danny), Patrick Noonan (Cop #1), Rebekah Brockman (Cop #2), Lee Sellars (Chief), Donald Paul (Agent Mann), Jeff Kim (Agent Shu)
Plot
In Boonton, Pennsylvania, 78-year-old Milton lives in retirement where the biggest event of his week is to attends council meetings to make helpful suggestions. His daughter Denise thinks that he is starting to be affected by memory loss and experiencing confusion. Milton then wakes up to discover a UFO has crashed in his backyard. However, neither the authorities, Denise or the council take him seriously when he mentions this – in fact, Denise takes him to a doctor to check his mental faculties. Milton discovers the alien passenger from the craft unconscious in the garden and gives it a blanket and water, before inviting it inside. Sandy, an aged friend from the council meetings, comes to visit and is startled to meet the alien. She insists on naming it Jules. They are discovered and joined by another aged friend Joyce. At the same time, the government is searching for the crash site of the UFO.
Marc Turtletaub has become known as producer of films such as Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Sherrybaby (2006), Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), White Fang (2018) and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), among others. Jules was the third film Turtletaub had directed, following Gods Behaving Badly (2013), a comedy about Greek gods in the present day, and Puzzle (2018). What is interesting about Turtletaub and his father Arthur is that before becoming film producers they created The Money Store, one of the top companies in the US involved the subprime mortgage lending market, although this had been sold and the Turtletaubs exited by the time of the 2008 financial crisis.
The obvious comparison to be made is between Jules and E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) where rather than befriending a young boy, the alien is aided by Ben Kingsley as a 78-year-old man. Most people are probably going to be quick to make the comparison to Cocoon (1985) where a group of senior citizens are rejuvenated after bathing in a pool that contains pods retrieved by alien visitors. Aside from the obvious seniors and aliens aspect, this is a lesser comparison – there is no rejuvenation aspect here. A better comparison might be to Batteries Not Included (1987) where miniature baby UFOs came down to visit the senior citizens and other residents of an apartment building.
For all its comedy focus, Jules is a film with an acute emphasis on the difficulty of aging – of the dullness of life as a senior citizen, the willingness of others to assume that Ben Kingsley is losing his memory and wits and their readiness to institutionalise him, his relationship with children that he has neglected, the sense of being ignored and invisible to the rest of society as a senior. Kingsley’s line at the end where he contemplates leaving with the alien “I prefer not to have Denise see me get worse and worse every year” seems particularly bleak in its outlook. Marc Turtletaub turned 78 as he made Jules so you can perhaps understand that much of what is depicted has some personal relevance to him.
One of the saddest aspects here is how Ben Kingsley talks to people about the UFO crashed in his backyard and nobody seems to even pay attention or dismisses him, let alone do something basic like actually come and visit to disprove what he is saying. (You do keep wondering how a UFO the size of at least a medium-sized truck can crash in someone’s yard and not be noticed by neighbours, although when we do venture out into the yard you can at least see that Ben Kingsley’s property extends much further than usual and is surrounded by trees).
Ben Kingsley gives an extremely good performance. In fact, he so subsumes himself in the role of the elderly man and his slow, plain mannerisms – not to mention comes with a full head of hair and a pair of glasses – that you almost fail to recognise it was Kingsley at the outset. The two other excellent performances from Jane Curtin, unrecognisable from shows like Kate & Allie (1984-9) and 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001), and the lesser-known Harriet [Sansom] Harris, as the two women companions who join Kingsley. It is the three great performances from them that make the film work, without them Jules would be a fairly slight work. The other performance you cannot go without complimenting is Jade Quon as Jules where the slow, impassive and unreactive performance, at most denoted by a blinking stare or raised hands, ends up being quietly affecting.
Thanks to its three performances, Jules moves without a misstep. The plot would be slim in someone else’s hands – and there is the weird aspect about a UFO being powered by dead cats, which kept reminding of another E.T.-influenced work, ALF (1986-90). The ending reached is every bit an emotional tearjerker as the parting in E.T..
Trailer here