Film

My filmy film: Arthur

Rebecca Sear | Tuesday 26 April, 2011 10:23

Director: Jason Winer
Stars: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren and Jennifer Garner

In this light-hearted remake of the 1981 film, Russell Brand takes on the taxing role of a flamboyant bachelor billionaire, Arthur, who is nanny-ed into unemployability by lifelong governess, Hobson (Helen Mirren). Arthur’s days spent cavorting around New York with his chauffer dressed as Batman and generally indulging in laddish pursuits are threatened when mummy (Geraldine James) delivers a crushing ultimatum: marry money hungry socialite Susan (Jennifer Garner) and ensure the future of the family business or face a life of poverty. What seems like a solid business agreement is jeopardised via a chance encounter with a captivating writer from Queens, Naomi (Greta Gerwig), and Arthur must choose between his love of money and his love of a penniless enchantress whom his mother loathes.

Having never seen the original, I daren’t attempt a comparison. However, what stands out about this update is the limitlessness of a big movie budget and a wicked sense of fun, and also the genuine likability of Brand and Gerwig’s characters. Brand’s ability to build authentic rapport with other actors confidently sets off the on-screen relationships with Naomi and Hobson’s character, and he manages just about to extend that ability to offsetting Jennifer Garner’s dullness. The story is an engaging one, and there’s plenty of scope for tomfoolery when Arthur brazenly crashes into the world of work. However, more serious scenes feel a little weak and faintly gauche next to the uninhibited silliness of the majority of moments which are comedic.

The strange thing about Brand as an actor is that he is usually accepts roles which require little more than transposing his own cheeky-chappie demeanour to various unlikely situations: playing a billionaire (who loves women and has an alcohol dependency), portraying a rock star in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to The Greek (who has an eye for the ladies and legs for skinny black jeans).

His fledgling acting career seems entirely based around getting to live out a teenage boy’s fantasies of wealth and fame whilst being his usual amiable yet inexhaustible self. Whilst Brand is very good at being, well, Russell Brand, there are parts in Arthur which suggest that he is selling himself short as an actor in favour of roles which are perhaps less challenging and more likely to ensure a box office hit. One can’t help but feel that the Hollywood gloss which has been applied to Brand by the bucket load– lest we forget his former winning beehive/stubble/busty Camden dollybird on one arm combo- along with the sugary wife he’s found himself in the cartoonish Miss Perry are responsible for turning the foulmouthed Dickensian comedian into something more palatable and mainstream for the American market.

Arthur feels like a caricature of Brand’s own colourful life which seems less like a serious performer method acting, and more like a funny way of playing down his past misdemeanours to a market which may not yet have explored the delights of My Booky Wook 1&2.

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