Ignoring the old adage about acting opposite animals and children, Sir Michael Caine quietly steals a new movie with his portrayal of a bad-tempered old man.

Is Anybody There? is a coming-of-age story about a lonely boy whose parents run a home for the aged. Playing his real age -- 75 at the time -- and fearlessly stepping into a character beset by guilt, anger and dementia, Caine puts in the sort of performance that will remind you why he's a bona fide movie star. You'll never look at Batman's butler in quite the same way again.

Bill Milner (Son of Rambow) is Edward, the child actor at the centre of Is Anybody There?. Edward is a quiet boy of about 10, and he's still adjusting to his parents' strange new occupation -- they've turned their house into an old-age home. Seems Edward just gets to know people and then they die; worse yet, he wants his old bedroom back, but it's always occupied by some codger lodger or another.

Not too surprisingly, Edward has become a bit obsessed with death. He puts his tape recorder under the beds of the dying, hoping to hear something important at the moment they shuffle off their mortal coil. He's fascinated by magic and science and ghosts, and hopes against hope he'll get some sign from 'beyond.'

It's a macabre hobby, to be sure, but it keeps Edward from concentrating too much on the here and now and the problems therein: Mom and dad seem a bit estranged from each other, and Edward doesn't really have friends at school.

Into this scenario comes Clarence (Caine), an aged magician who can no longer live by himself. Distressed to discover he's going to be giving up his independent way of life, Clarence mostly wants to be left alone. Edward watches him; he watches Edward. The child is initially attracted to Clarence because Clarence knows magic tricks, but when the old man holds a seance, Edward is hooked. Here's one geriatric resident he's willing to befriend.

Is Anybody There? is set in the early 1980s in some quiet spot on the British coast, so it's not as if the landscape can fill in for any shortcomings in the story. (Luckily, there aren't any.) What's important about Edward's world is that it seems still untouched by Margaret Thatcher and what she brought to England with her.

The cast is superb, with Anne-Marie Duff and David Morrissey as Edward's parents and an extraordinary collection of respected British actors as the residents of the old-folks home -- Rosemary Harris, Thelma Barlow, Sylvia Syms and Peter Vaughan among them.

For a picture brave enough to include old age and death as regular events -- did we mention that this isn't a Hollywood movie? -- Is Anybody There? also happens to be pretty damn funny.

It's also charming, despite the dark subject matter. You could say the same about Caine's performance.

(This film is rated PG)

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