Avis Metacritic

It is also hard not to see remnants of a younger Michael Caine -- beautifully seductive and enigmatic all those years ago in "Alfie." He has said his wife cried when she saw the performance; you understand why.

Blending humor and heartbreak in a performance that makes a small movie a richly satisfying one, Caine truly is magic.

While Caine and young Milner make for amusing adversaries, it's nice to see Crowley paying respect to his elders by populating the retirement home with a number of familiar faces, including those belonging to Rosemary Harris, Sylvia Syms and longtime "Coronation Street" resident Thelma Barlow.

All-too-familiar and schmaltzy territory for both coming-of-age films and movies with elderly actors.

More deft than it first appears, director John Crowley's gentle-but-not-sappy drama features another late-day masterpiece-in-miniature from Michael Caine.

The script is always shakier than the performers trying to bring it across, and by the third act, it lets them down completely.

What balances the movie is Mr. Caine's exceptional portrayal of old age as the accumulation of a lifetime's experience. In his performance the child, the youthful rogue and the forgetful codger all live at once.

All of this is at once predictable and implausible -- a two-hander of a story so overplotted and overpopulated that by the time it's winding up, the question isn't so much Is Anybody There? as it is, "Why on earth are so many bodies here?"

No one could save Is Anybody There? from its treacly self and Michael Caine doesn't, but he gives it a grand try.

Even Crowley, who seems to have a knack with overloaded material, can't quite bring the thing in for a safe landing in all the slush.