Cinematic Releases: Brian and Charles (2022) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Focus Features

British television director Jim Archer’s feature film debut Brian and Charles about a lonely man named Brian (David Earl) living in Wales who decides to build himself a talking robot named Charles Petrescu (Chris Hayward) for a companion is another one of those short films (made in 2017) that received a fully-fledged theatrical remake.  

While not an uncommon practice with George Lucas’ transition from short to feature filmmaking emerging in similar fashion and more recently the American horror films Lights Out or Come Play stemming from internet shorts, Brian and Charles while a generally light and sweet natured crowd pleaser represents a case of a minimal concept stretched out to feature length with hasty if not padded results.  What was a cute and energetic little snapshot of a man and his synthetic companion living alone together in Wales grows flat and tedious as a two-hour film. 

 
The setup of Brian and Charles is exceedingly simple with Brian as a bearded isolated laughing stock of an inventor living in the countryside bullied by local trash while striking a loose bond with neighbor Hazel (Louise Brealey) on his way to and from the grocery store.  One day he decides to build himself a robot for a companion which consists of what looks like legs, arms and a head from a crash test dummy, a buttoned shirt, slacks and knit sweater for garb.  All the while Brian occasionally addresses the cameraman whom we never see but sometimes hear offscreen, making it a quasi-mockumentary?

After a thunderstorm and lightning rages the otherwise nonfunctional robot to life and Brian gives his creation a name, Brian and Charles are off and running enjoying life together.  That is until, with the expansions upon the short film of the same name, Brian’s Frankenstein-ed artificial person starts tiring of the same routine in Wales and dreams of life on the beaches in Hawaii.  

 
On paper and in short film form this is all very sugary sweet and wonderful quirky funny kind of stuff.  The awkwardness of both characters is tender hearted with the deliberately flat and stilted delivery of dialogue from the robot voiced with gleeful monotone by Chris Hayward is cute and funny for the most part.  The needle drops of pop tunes for comic effect is charming.  

The setting and locations of the Welsh countryside, mountains, plains and tightly knit communities lensed gorgeously by Murrett Tullett in panoramic widescreen are wonderful.  If Ben Wheatley ever directed a PG rated film instead of his usual offbeat British handheld horror fare, it might look something like this.  Then there’s the main actors David Earl who is a likable scruffy teddy bear of a guy with his quirky pet dog-like talking robot by his side.  It all sounds like a nice time, right?

 
Well, the truth is this was a great short film expanded to a kind of dull modern day riff on Heartbeeps if anyone remembers that Andy Kaufman starring dud, playing on the awkward makeup and voice acting for schmaltzy romantic comedy.  Not outright bad per se but for someone who consumes an avid amount of slow cinema in general I was startled by how restless I was getting with Brian and Charles.  For all the vastness of the scenery and tender natured good intentions of the story, the film is kind of empty.

Sweet and gentle comfort food is fine with a generally languid pace and approach to storytelling is perfectly alright.  Somewhere in Brian and Charles was the energy of the previous short film of the same name, in moments.  As a whole, not going to lie, it stagnates but one can’t fault them too hard for trying to give us a robot buddy comedy from a place you don’t usually see on the big screen.

--Andrew Kotwicki

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