Review: Arthur

My sister once made me a low-fat chocolate pie from a Weight Watchers recipe. It looked mouth-wateringly delicious, but when I took a bite, I was taken aback by the lack of any taste whatsoever. It wasn't bad, it was simply the most flavorless food I'd ever put in my mouth. It was an illusion of pie, and I stopped after a second bite and decided that pie time is a time when calories should not be considered.

I felt the same way watching Arthur, the remake of the 1981 frothy romantic comedy, which opened Friday in wide release. Even as a remake, it looks so promising, especially if you have a guilty fondness for Russell Brand (like I do) or Helen Mirren. The casting is fabulous, the New York setting is lovely, the rich-boy premise means potential scenes of cinematic decadence ... and yet its humor and romance have no flavor whatsoever. Arthur has little to savor or enjoy, and it borders on the puzzling, since wit contains no calories or fat. (Or perhaps it secretly does. This would explain a lot about the loss of my girlish figure, instead of blaming pie.)

Arthur follows the general storyline of the original film, with a few minor changes to allow for a contemporary setting and a slight twist at the end. Brand assumes the Dudley Moore role, but his drunken millionaire foibles focus on spectacle, not wit. He wrecks a Batmobile (while in George Clooney's costume), he acts expensively nutty at an upscale auction house, he throws tens of thousands of dollars at crowds. His apartment contains a movie theater and a magnetic bed. Yawn. His closest companion is his childhood nanny, Hobson (Mirren).

To stabilize the alcoholic man-child, his mother Vivienne (Geraldine James) issues an ultimatum: Arthur will lose his fortune unless he marries wealthy and capable Susan Johnson, played by Jennifer Garner with a manic edge. But as soon as Arthur is engaged to Susan, he meets the adorable and terribly dressed Naomi (Greta Gerwig), a young woman from Queens supporting herself and her dad by working as an unlicensed tour guide around Manhattan.

Greta Gerwig works much better for me as a working-girl love interest than Liza Minnelli ever did. And I enjoyed Helen Mirren very much ... in fact, I'd love to see a movie where she and Brand were actual love interests together ... now that would be fascinating. But apart from these bright spots, and some very pretty scenes in Grand Central Station (which still don't beat the waltz scene in The Fisher King), Arthur fails to be funny or at all convincing ... and I mean both the movie and its title character. Arthur isn't a charming boozer, he's an alcoholic, and the script treats this in a serious and heavy-handed way.

Screenwriter Peter Baynham, who's worked with Steve Coogan and Sacha Baron Cohen, includes many of the same scenes and even some of the same dialogue as in the 1981 film. However, all memorably clever dialogue has disappeared. The references to the Frog and Toad books are sweet, but nostalgia is no replacement for humor in a movie that is supposed to be a comedy.

At its heart, the 1981 movie was a fairy tale. The rich prince in the tower can have anything he wants -- except love, and he has to marry the frigid princess when he wants the warm-hearted commoner. Some aspects of the story are unbelievable, but it works because we can see the fantasy aspects under the contemporary setting and characters. Comedic dialogue, charmingly delivered, makes up for other weaknesses. In this version of Arthur, however, real life insists on being front and center, so when the movie doesn't make sense in the real-life setting, it fails. And its humor is so weak and tepid that it can't disguise the film's flaws in plot and character.

Arthur isn't a bad movie, it's just not much of anything at all ... and considering the talent surrounding it, that's a disappointment.