Product Description
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Russell Brand reinvents the role of lovable billionaire
Arthur Bach, an irresponsible charmer who has always relied on
two things to get by: his limitless fortune and lifelong nanny
Hobson (Academy Award® winner* Helen Mirren) to keep him out of
trouble. Now he faces his biggest challenge: choosing between an
arranged marriage to ambitious corporate exec Susan (Jennifer
Garner) that will ensure his lavish lifestyle, or an uncertain
future with the one thing money can’t buy – Naomi (Greta Gerwig),
his true love. With Naomi’s inspiration and some unconventional
help from Hobson, Arthur will take the most expensive risk of his
life and learn what it means to be a man in this re-imagining of
the beloved O®-winning* romantic comedy Arthur.
.com
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As a high-concept Hollywood pitch, remaking the charming
Dudley Moore 1981 comic romp about a man-child billionaire
playboy with a rather serious drinking problem and installing
Russell Brand as the new lead sounded like a pretty good idea.
With Brand's reputation as a semi-reformed bad boy and actual
recovering alcoholic/addict (not to mention his parlayed success
from English standup fame to movies like Forgetting Sarah
Marshall and Get Him to the Greek), he was a great casting choice
to reprise Moore's devilishly innocent character. In many ways
Brand is among the heirs to first-wave loony British comics like
Moore, Peter Sellers, and Spike Milligan, along with actors like
Steve Coogan, Eddie Izzard, and Ricky Gervais. But something
happened in the 30-year translation that has deflated a lot of
charm from the 2011 Arthur. Brand is probably the best thing
about the movie, although he's never quite able to capture the
characterization of a genuinely agreeable immature cad that Moore
portrayed so adorably. This is Russell Brand playing another
version of himself, which isn't such a bad thing, just not quite
adorable enough. Brand is a smart, funny, and quick-on-his-feet
improviser, and lot of that comes through, but he'd probably be
the first to admit that he's no Dudley Moore.
The basics of the story remain unchanged. Arthur Bach is a trust
fund child who is stuck in childhood, even though his pampered
bubble of wealth now brings him toys like prostitutes, famous
movie prop cars (the Batmobile, the Back to the Future DeLorean,
the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine, and others all make appearances),
and all manner of grownup baubles at every fleeting whim. His
stuck-in-childhood mode seems to be blamed on the loss of his
doting her at a very young age. But now at 30, his prim mother
(Geraldine James) wants him to grow up, stop embarrassing the
huge corporation that bears their name, and marry a respectable
girl (Jennifer Garner) who will tame him and give the company a
veneer of respectability. Upon threat of being cut off from the
family fortune, Arthur reluctantly agrees, but then immediately
falls for the real girl of his dreams, a lowly--and
poor--Manhattan tour guide (Greta Gerwig), who falls for him too.
She doesn't even care about the money. The issue of drink is
handled somewhat differently 30 years after Dudley Moore made
such a loveable and unrepentant chronic inebriant. Since it's
kind of a more significant societal issue, the filmmakers haven't
really been able to make it as much of a fun and funny part of
who Arthur is (plus, Dudley Moore did a drunken shtick that was
fairly classic, while there doesn't seem to be much difference
between Brand's drunken and sober Arthur). Arthur's drinking is
treated as a genuine problem in this update, which also provides
comedy the dilemma of dealing with seriousness. Fortunately the
sense of forward momentum, Brand's general likeability, and the
pervading sunny tone cover up a lot. The other big selling point
and major change from the original is the character of Hobson,
who for Dudley Moore was a dour butler played by John Gielgud,
and for Russell Brand is a disapproving nanny in the persona of
Helen Mirren. Both Hobsons were best friends to Arthur, and
Mirren's statuesque gravitas brings a lot to the authentic
lifelong affection that seems real as handled by both actors.
Overlooking some slackness in the script, Brand and Mirren give
this bright, shiny updated Arthur longer legs than it might
otherwise have had in striding cleverly into audiences' hearts.
--Ted Fry