by Abe Rose
** (out of four)
Russell Brand as Arthur
The greatest comedic discovery of the past few years has to be when Russell Brand first appeared to a mainstream American audience in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Originally, that script called for the villain to be an intellectual British writer, but when Brand auditioned for the part he practically threw the instructions out the window and instead channeled a nail-bitingly funny rock-and-roll star. He made being self-absorbed look like an art form. The writers loved him so much, they actually re-wrote the movie to include him in it as a drug-addicted, obnoxious celebrity. He was so funny in the movie that he even got his own spin-off movie Get Him to the Greek. Unchained, you better watch out, because he will come at a movie with everything he’s got. But when he gets groomed and trained to play nice, it can be sad to see. If you thought he wasn’t that funny when he hosted the VMA awards, watch his stand-up when he explains what he really wanted to say when he was to introduce Kanye West.
So I ask, if Russell Brand is at his funniest when left to his own R-rated tinkerings, WHY put him in a PG-13 vehicle, and on top of that, a remake which will garner comparisons to the great Dudley Moore comedy, Arthur? I have to admit though, when I first heard of the news that this movie would star Brand as Arthur, and put him alongside a cast that includes the grand Helen Mirren, and the up-and-coming Greta Gerwig, I could see the reasoning behind the casting. This is a great cast in of itself. If they were put in a romantic comedy that deviated from the Arthur formula, they may have had something really special. But when the script traps them into recreating scene by scene and line by line of the original, it left me thinking “I remember this scene being funnier.” When it comes down to it, Dudley played a better drunk. Russell, more or less, is indistinguishable between his drunken and sober state in this film. Maybe all that changes is his volume. And I hate to do this, but the comparison between the two performances was inevitable: while Brand plays a one-note drunk, Dudley Moore could play a symphony.
For those unfamiliar with the original film, the story is primarily concerned with the drunken misadventures of the son of a billionaire, Arthur (Russell Brand) who must marry Susan (Jennifer Garner), a businesswoman whom he does not love. If he doesn’t marry her, he will be cut off from his inheritance and live poor for the rest of his life. That would explain his drinking. But when another woman, a poor common woman named Naomi (Greta Gerwig) comes into his life, a poor life doesn’t seem so bad. The same goes for giving up his reckless, drunken behavior. After being with her, getting drunk and crashing one-of-a-kind Batmobiles on top of historic landmarks just doesn’t seem like the kind of conduct he should be flirting with.
You don't even want to know how much this thing costs
The film is most enjoyable when it deviates from the original film. A 1981 drunken Arthur would spend his wealth on limo rides, picking up prostitutes and crashing wealthy parties. But a 2011 drunken Arthur would spend his wealth on hovering beds, Back to the Future Deloreons, and custom-made Pez toys of him and a first date. That kind of needless spending almost makes the 1981 Arthur’s spending look almost classy by comparison. This kind of stuff is fun. But it’s only the icing on this cake. And putting tasty icing on a twenty-year-old cake doesn’t make it taste any less stale.
What made the original Arthur work so well was the lovable fecklessness of the character. Arthur tries to be good, in his own drunken and irresponsible way. He would want to learn an important moral at the end of it all, if he only was capable of it. But the newer film not only pounds in the important moral, it steamrolls it in and pads it in like it were a deep concrete. Why is this necessary? Were we incapable of knowing right from wrong at the very get-go, and that Arthur’s actions are immature and infantile? The older film never felt like it was giving us a sermon, because they probably knew it would result in preaching to the choir. I dunno, maybe the recession made the filmmakers uneasy about making a film about a chap who outbids himself on Abe Lincoln’s antique clothes at auctions, so they had to make sure this reckless spender got his comeuppance. Now I’m not the person to bash moral epiphanies, for I’m glad to accept them when the movie good-and-well earns the moment. But this movie tries too hard when all it really had to do was relax and let the chemistry work itself. It forces and strains itself in all the wrong ways to imitate the Dudley Moore film, when it would have really played to its strengths to ignore the strict rules and let Russell Brand work his own magic. It’s like forcing Jackson Pollack to do a children’s coloring book; I’m sure he could restrain himself to paint within the lines, but you just know his soul would be crying out for the chance to artfully scribble.
