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0In Arthur, the spectacularly grating remake of Steve Gordon's 1981 P. G. Wodehouse simulation (this time, Peter Baynham miswrote, Jason Winer misdirected), Russell Brand gives a career-killing performance.
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30This Arthur cravenly turns Susan into a monstrous status-seeker, making her less of a human being and thus much easier for Arthur to trample over in securing a meaningful adult relationship.
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60Brand fan? You'll likely enjoy his antics. But Russellophobics would be better off seeking out the original.
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67Easy on the eyes, intermittently amusing and never downright awful.
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50It's amazing how a lifeless, pointless remake can provoke pangs of nostalgia about a mediocre movie.
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42It seems a bit cruel to cast Garner, who exudes charm, in such a charmless role.
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50With such a thin excuse for a leading man, Arthur is a dud.
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38Attempting to fill Dudley Moore's top hat in Arthur, Russell Brand rapidly descends the rungs of the comedy ladder from "unfunny" to "irritating" to "vulgar" to the bottom one - "Andy Dick."
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20This Arthur is missing a soul.
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25This Arthur is an exercise in time-travel tedium, a trip to the Land That Funny Forgot.
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50Misfires on multiple levels but isn't all that terrible.
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75A fairly close remake of the great 1981 Dudley Moore movie, with pleasures of its own.
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38Apparently, somebody thought it was time for a remake. Clearly, somebody was dead wrong.
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40If you get caught between the moon and New York City--or even just between two movies at the multiplex--the best that you can do is skip this one.
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50That cast is precisely what makes the new Arthur so frustrating.
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50The movie lacks joy. It has poignancy and intelligence, and it holds interest, but it never opens up into happiness and fantasy. Maybe it's the recession.
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50The star does his patented shtick, supported by a handful of blue-chip supporting performers, as the story lurches through contrived, seminaughty comic set pieces toward a sentimental ending.
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50Despite his cockney-accented verbosity, Brand does not convey the effortless conviviality that Dudley Moore did in the part.
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30Meanwhile, Mirren, that grande dame of cinema, just seems tired. And who could blame her? She's in the midst of this disaster, literally and figuratively dying right in front of us. Made me want to cry, just not for Arthur.
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63Are the results funny? In the margins, yes.
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25Gordon, who died shortly after the first Arthur, never had to see the luckless 1988 sequel that made his beloved characters seem like strangers. The new Arthur, insipid when it should be infectious, leaves the same deadly impression.
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58The new Arthur is a feathery screwball satire, competent on its own terms, yet as the movie went on I found it increasingly hard to separate the character's self-indulgence from that of the actor playing him.
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63When remaking a popular film, you must remember this: First, do no harm to the original. Arthur accomplishes this, with Russell Brand slurring his way neatly through the title role.
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50The new remake of Arthur is a thin copy of the 1981 original. But it has a few things going for it.
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50Russell Brand steps into the role of Arthur Bach for the 2011 remake, and while it's one of the more reined-in performances of his short, busy big-screen career, Brand's unvarying onscreen persona just doesn't do soulful.
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40Step over to the liquor cabinet and mix yourself a good, stiff drink - if you plan on seeing this godforsaken thing, you'll need it.
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30Arthur overextends its welcome and relies too much on prop comedy.
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38This Arthur is on the rocks long before Last Call.
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60Brand ultimately can't make a watered-down Arthur as sweetly charming as the original, but he certainly makes it better than it would have been otherwise.
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40Three decades of skyrocketing income inequality have soured the comedy of Arthur's astronomically expensive self-indulgences.
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Apr 6, 201150This remake seems to exist only to zap the original of its minor pleasures.
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50Brand is amusing, in a nutty "Get Him to the Greek" sort of way, while Moore delivered one of the funniest performances ever.
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40This Arthur feels flat and lifeless, especially when compared to its highly successful predecessor.
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40The original film, for all its zaniness, existed in a recognizable Koch-era metropolis, one that paradoxically added to our hero's likable haze of denial. This time, the town is far shinier (what recession?).
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20In the end, it isn't so much that the New Arthur isn't the Old Arthur. Rather it's the anti-Arthur.
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40Even the Brit-wit chemistry of Russell Brand and Helen Mirren can't offset the self-conscious degree to which this tame, calculated effort sticks to its source.
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10Has so many things wrong with it that one can only stare at the screen in disbelief. [25 April, 2011 p. 89]
User score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 24
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Mixed: 5 out of 24
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Negative: 10 out of 24
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This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.
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10There is a lot of urban humor in this film which might not be appreciated by some movie goers. Many critics who saw the original 1981 â