Russell Brand has been working very hard in recent years building the Brand brand.
He has done so with great success. Last weekend, “Hop,” an Easter-themed animated film in which he voiced the lead bunny, was No. 1 at the box office. But this weekend, Brand, 35, faces his biggest test yet with the opening of the remake of “Arthur,” in which he plays the title role.
The British stand-up comic and TV and radio personality crossed over to American shores in a big way just three years ago. Some in England would say that, after years of very public excessive drugging, drinking and misbehavior there, Brand had worn out his welcome and needed a new stage.
But that would be an unkind view; maybe he just needed a bigger stage than could found on an island nation.
In 2008, a now clean and sober but still rat’s-nest-coiffed Brand first scored big Stateside.
Playing a sybaritic British rocker in the movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” he wasn’t in many scenes, but he totally stole every one in which he appeared. That same year, MTV tapped him to host its annual Video Music Awards, a decision that panned out when ratings jumped for the telecast.
He continued to establish himself as a star, successfully reprising his “Sarah Marshall” rocker role in last summer’s “Get Him to the Greek”; publishing “My Bookie Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs and Stand-Up,” a best-selling autobiography; and courting constant tabloid coverage with his engagement and subsequent marriage last fall to American singer Katy Perry.
So, will “Arthur,” a comedy about a supposedly lovable, perpetually soused millionaire, make Brand an even bigger star? Not bloody likely. This new “Arthur” is as flat as that open bottle of champagne left over on its hero’s beside table the morning after.
Remaking “Arthur” (1981) was never going to be easy. Attitudes about drinking have only grown less forgiving in the three decades since the original movie opened. It doesn’t help that this remake, by director Jason Winer (TV’s “Modern Family”) and screenwriter Peter Baynham (“Bruno”), is also slow-paced and slow-witted.
This “Arthur” serves to underscore how heavily the original depended on the puckish charm of the pixie-ish Dudley Moore in the title role. Moore’s Arthur had such a wonderful time and was such good company when he was sloshed that his happiness was infectious.
That joie de vivre, or joie de bottle, is missing in Brand’s Arthur. While he showed exactly that sort of revelry in wretched excess in “Sarah Marshall” and “Greek,” he’s too much the hurt man-child here. How can we feel sympathy for Arthur when he clearly is already wallowing in his very own, endless pity party?
Also, Moore’s Arthur was sexy, but in a cuddly way (not for nothing was Moore nicknamed “Cuddly Dudley”). Part of that simply had to do with Moore’s -- he was five-foot-two -- lack of stature.
