‘Jules’ Movie Review: Ben Kingsley Stars in 2023’s Second Quirky Little Alien Comedy
Ben Kingsley gives an incredible performance in Marc Turtletaub’s Jules, but can’t prevent the movie from falling short of its overall ambitions.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Forget Barbenheimer, here’s Jules with Invisible Hand. You’d be forgiven not to know that two quirky independent comedies centered on aliens came out on the same day (in Canada): Marc Turtletaub’s Jules and Cory Finley’s Landscape with Invisible Hand. Both share similar themes and are deeply introspective films examining the human condition through our interactions with extraterrestrials. Finley’s film is more absurd than Turtletaub’s, and they’re both excellent light Saturday night watches. It is a shame that I saw both of these films in nearly empty cinemas (I was the only one for Landscape), as these comedies deserve far more attention in a relatively dry time for new blockbusters.
Jules is more upbeat than Landscape with Invisible Hand, as it chronicles a strange point in Milton Robinson’s (Ben Kingsley) mundane life. While he tries to hold on to the things he enjoys and fights for his community’s right for a crosswalk and a slogan change, which he routinely repeats during every City Hall meeting, Milton’s life gets turned upside down when an alien spaceship crash-lands his backyard. Not only that, but something comes out of it and starts to live in Milton’s house.
On the other hand, his daughter (Zoë Winters) doesn’t believe him and thinks it’s a sign of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Milton exhibits symptoms that could indicate Alzheimer’s, but that subplot doesn’t seem as important as, well, the alien living in his backyard. It’s part of why Jules doesn’t work as well as it should. Does it want to be a retread of The Father or a quirky movie starring senior A-listers who discover an alien? It can’t be both, and even if Kingsley gives an all-around impassioned portrayal of Milton, his performance still suffers from the movie’s multiple tonal inconsistencies.
The film's best parts are when Milton’s condition begins to deteriorate as he tries to fix his relationship with his daughter. These poignant moments of humanity offer massive amounts of heart to the film and Kingsley’s performance of Milton. I’ve mentioned The Father in the previous paragraphs, but Kingsley is nowhere near the level of Anthony Hopkins in Florian Zeller’s film. He does, however, represent Milton’s difficulties with compassion and grace and completely distances himself from Hopkins’ Oscar-winning turn. However, the story beats are similar to Zeller’s film, and you can’t help but feel a whiff of familiarity on screen.
But that subplot gets quickly dropped and barely explored once the alien arrives, and the rest of the movie is more quirky and upbeat than the gloomy prospect of a devastating medical diagnosis. In this part, Kingsley is joined by Harriet Sansom Harris and Jane Curtin as Milton’s friends, Sandy and Joyce, who respectively name the alien Jules and Gary (Jade Quon). Joyce disagrees that the alien should be named Jules because it looks more like a Gary. She consistently names him that way, and her friends pay her no mind and call him Jules. The alien accepts either way. That’s one of the film’s funniest details.
However, the alien stuff doesn’t work as strongly as the human drama, partly because Turtletaub and screenwriter Gavin Steckler never flesh out the humans’ connection to the alien. Instead, we’re stuck in a series of one silly sequence after the other and one extremely odd one that feels far too dark to belong in a film like this: Joyce sings Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” in the film’s weirdest moment to impress Jules while the alien kills a man trying to rob Sandy’s house by exploding his head through telepathy. That’s rather intense, and that moment never gets mentioned again after the event. Hey, if an alien blew up someone’s head, with his mind, and while not being in the same LOCATION as where the event took place, I would ensure it would get mentioned again (and again), but it never does.
However, the movie does make up for its inconsistencies through terrific chemistry between Kingsley, Sansom Harris, and Curtin. Sansom Harris gets the best line of the entire film, blurting out in total shivering horror, “Oh, Christ, what the f– is that?” when she sees the alien for the first time. Her body completely shuts down as she sees Jules, and the audience (including myself) is in stitches. After incredible turns in Licorice Pizza and Werewolf by Night, it’s no surprise that Sansom Harris will steal the show away from Kingsley. However, every actor gives a compelling performance.
Then it tries to shoehorn in a political subplot involving two government agents looking for the spaceship, but that doesn’t go as far as it should. It almost feels like an afterthought instead of an integral part of the movie. And like Landscape with Invisible Hand, the film ends with many of these plot threads completely unresolved, maybe by design, but it definitely feels less fulfilling of an overall film experience than had the film taken its time to tie up all loose ends. Finley’s film is far more ambitious than Turtletaub, which excuses itself when it leaves many plot threads ambiguously, but Jules doesn’t seem to follow that throughline.
Because of this, Jules doesn’t fulfill most of its narrative potential. However, the film is still worth watching, thanks to the compassionate performances of Kingsley, Sansom Harris, and Curtin. We all need more love; a comfort movie seems the perfect remedy in these dreary times. You won’t regret seeing Jules, especially as a Saturday night picker-upper.