Arthur – review

russell brand
Retch and famous: Russell Brand in the remake of Arthur. Photograph: Barry Wetcher Barry Wetcher/Barry Wetcher

In 1981, Arthur was a loose reworking of Chaplin's City Lights, conflating the roles of the sentimental little tramp and the alcoholic millionaire as a vehicle for Dudley Moore when he was the hottest British comedian in Hollywood since Chaplin. The thin plot had him choosing between continuing to live in Manhattan affluence with a suitably upper-class bride or marrying the kookie Liza Minnelli and being disinherited. It had two unpleasant ideas: a) drunks are ipso facto funny (especially when driving expensive cars); b) there's something intrinsically comic in dignified, middle-aged people such as John Gielgud, as Arthur's butler, Hobson, using foul or raunchy language.

The original Arthur was a pretty mirthless affair, but the crude remake starring Russell Brand is infinitely worse, as bad as anything I've seen in 2011 which is shaping up as "The International Year of Bad Comedy". Brand, with his whining estuary accent and his usual line in puerile persiflage, is a charmless embarrassment. Gielgud's Jeeves-like Hobson has become a pointless nanny, with Helen Mirren padded around the waist and wearing sensible shoes. A cross between her Elizabeth II and Mrs Doubtfire, she utters unfunny putdowns and occasionally warns the promiscuous Arthur of the STDs that will follow his drunken indulgence in unsafe sex. Joy has rarely been so confined.