Jules: This sci-fi adventure feels like ET for older people

Ben Kingsley plays Milton, a 78-year-old widower who lives alone in the small town of Boonton, in western Pennsylvania. He’s getting a little forgetful. His daughter, Denise (Succession’s Zoë Winters), is greatly perturbed when she finds tinned food misplaced in the bathroom cabinet. Milton shrugs off her concerns and continues to venture out to the town meetings where he repeatedly advocates for changing the town’s motto and an additional crosswalk.

And then a spacecraft crashes in his back garden.

Alarmed, especially on account of his azaleas, he calls 911 and his perennially worried daughter. The authorities promptly dismiss his claims and his daughter doesn’t pick up, leaving Milton to take care of a large-headed, silver-skinned visitor from another world.

Milton’s peers, notably his fellow lonely oddballs Sandy (Licorice Pizza’s Harriet Sansom Harris) and Joyce (Jane Curtin) rally around the retiree and the extraterrestrial. They call their interplanetary guest Jules. Denise, upon hearing that her father is buying apples for an alien at the local shop – the alien loves them – thinks he has lost his mind. Shadowy government agents know otherwise.

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Working from a screenplay by Gavin Steckler, director Marc Turtletaub crafts a wry, lo-fi ET for elders. The stuntwoman Jade Quon delivers a lovely performance using only latex and wide eyes as the mute alien. The intergalactic interloper proves a patient sounding board for older people who are determined to hang on to their agency. Milton rambles amiably about his affection for CSI and his failings as a father. His friends lament lost opportunities.

This pleasant dramedy is jollied along by its talented veteran ensemble and the odd narrative curveball: a subplot about dead cats yields macabre surprises.

Jules opens in cinemas on Friday, December 29th