"I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking." Shakespeare's Othello
Russell Brand may not be as convincing a drunk as Dudley Moore in the original Arthur, but Brand makes the titular man-child as endearing as he could be given the premise of the comedy. Writer Peter Baynham brings some of the manic madness and tossed-off lines of Bruno to complement Brand's physicality for a pleasantly witty if not totally amusing satire of the idle rich.
Helen Mirren does well as his butler, Hobson, a middle-aged Mary Poppins, although decidedly darker. (Sir John Gielgud in the original would be tough to imitate.) Their relationship substitutes very nicely, thank you, for the lack of one between Arthur and his real mother (an effectively stiff Geraldine James). Her demand that he marry the social-climbing Susan (Jennifer Garner) or be disinherited is the romantic setup for him falling in love with "nobody" Naomi (Greta Gerwig). "Setup" for such set pieces as a deserted Grand Central Terminal with a "Pez" candy dinner and acrobats, a not terribly funny exhibition of Arthur's childlike charm.
I was greatly amused by the homage to Hitchcock, Rear Window specifically, when Arthur looks from his tub with golden binoculars at pedestrians who remind him of pop cult figures, some wittily chosen to resemble those close to him such as Hobson.
One of the small lessons of the film is that true love should be the reason for marriage, and more importantly AA is an effective solution for drinking problems. The film, after all, is about an immature rich man's discovering his inner man through sobriety. Doesn't sound that romantic, does it? Well, it isn't, even though the characters are enviably happy in the process, as is this movie-going experience.
"A very merry, dancing, drinking, laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time." John Dryden, the Secular Masque
