Review: ‘Arthur’ Remake Falls Flat

Arthur is one of those movies that was just a bad idea all around.

There was no need to remake the original Arthur, its arrival is ill-timed, Russell Brand should never have been cast, and it never should have gone into production with a script this bad.

Let's all just forget this one ever happened, shall we?

The movie follows the general outline of the 1981 original with Dudley Moore, except that Brand (at 35) is more than a decade younger than Moore was at the time and his valet is a woman instead of a man. That, and the laughs are almost entirely absent.

Brand is Arthur, a womanizing, alcoholic manchild who is heir to a nine-figure fortune. Living in a tricked-out New York bachelor pad and frequently getting into drunken shenanigans that embarrass his family, Arthur's only friend is valet Hobson (Helen Mirren, stepping in for John Gielgud and looking embarrassed to be there).

Arthur's scheming mother (Geraldine James) attempts to marry him off to a sexy psychopath (Jennifer Garner), but he simultaneously falls for Naomi (Greta Gerwig), a Queens girl, who spends each day showing tourists around Grand Central Terminal.

What goes wrong here? Where to begin?

Start with the movie's breathtakingly dishonest ad campaign, as the trailers and TV commercials completely omit any reference to the one thing—Arthur's alcoholism—that the movie is mostly about. And it makes no sense—that's what the original movie was about, not to mention that Brand's real-life history of addiction has been both well-documented and a huge part of everything he's ever done in his career, from movie roles to stand-up comedy, to multiple autobiographies.

On top of that, the original Arthur didn't really need updating—not with the 1988 sequel (so famously bad that Moore later disowned it), and not with a remake. And if it had to be remade, why now?

With unemployment still hovering around 9 percent, who wants to see a movie about a drunken idiot who throws unearned money around with abandon?

(Also: Does a horrible modern cover of Christopher Cross' "Arthur's Theme" play over the closing credits? Of course it does. )

I've admired a lot of Brand's work in the past, but he's at his best in small doses. He was great in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but when that character got a spinoff (last year's Get Him to the Greek), most of the good parts didn't even involve him.

In Arthur, Brand is in just about in every frame, and his mugging gets to be too much after about 10 minutes or so.

It also doesn't help that he's working with less than stellar material.

Yes, the worst thing of all about Arthur is that the script (by Peter Baynham) is simply atrocious. It's not rare for 15 or 20 minutes to pass without a laugh, and the screenplay is full of one-liners, clearly out of place for both the character and situation in which they're said.

The film also clocks in at nearly two hours, when it could have easily been 30 minutes shorter.

But even worse, the tone is all over the place. It's a pretty dark story, all things considered—a directionless, friendless alcoholic whose father is dead and whose mother doesn't care about him—but the movie concentrates mostly on lazy slapstick, while only occasionally diving into more serious stuff.

Dark comedy is hard to pull off, but Arthur doesn't even try.

The movie is actually directed competently, by TV veteran and first-time feature helmer Jason Winer, and with a fine eye for New York locations. But none of this is enough to overcome the witless script.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag, with Gerwig, truly beginning to emerge as a major talent, just about the only really good thing about the movie. Garner gets to have some fun with a role very different from what she usually does. But Mirren just looks bored, and Garner's father is played by Nick Nolte in a part that's a huge swing and a miss—Nolte now speaks so unintelligibly that I actually had to look up whether or not he's had a stroke. (He hasn't.)

In all, Arthur is a very convincing argument for the estate tax.

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The Silver Screen Rating: 1.5 stars (out of 5)

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Roll Credits: Arthur

Directed by: Jason Winer

Starring: Russell Brand, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Garner, Helen Mirren, Nick Nolte.

Rated: PG 13

Length: 2 hours

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