The comic performer David Earl plays a lonely inventor who builds a robot friend in this bionic buddy comedy.
For over a decade, the British comedian David Earl has been playing the character Brian Gittins, a shaggy, unfiltered eccentric whose prickly point of view inspires pity and unease. The pseudo-documentary “Brian and Charles,” an unevenly sentimental heart-tugger directed by Jim Archer, finds Brian in a corner of rural Wales feeling depressed and solitary despite the implied presence of documentarians, whom he addresses directly while facing the camera. There’s no evident reason for the mockumentary element, although it gives Earl a chance to mug for the lens.
To fix his low and lonely state, Brian builds a robot. Let Silicon Valley chase a sleek future of frictionless rectangles and orbs: Brian’s creation, Charles, is a towering, homemade shambles with gray hair and a doddering shuffle that gives the impression of a retired sheepherder. Chris Hayward, who wrote the movie with Earl, plays the bot and radiates marvelous vocal and physical energy from inside a costume that appears to be constructed from a cardboard box covered in a cardigan, with a mannequin head on a pole poking out of the top. He tests the audience’s ability to become invested in an unapologetically ridiculous concoction — and he succeeds better than the human caricatures who make up the rest of the ensemble, from a stock brute (Jamie Michie) to a potential love interest (Louise Brealey) who is stuck smiling patiently as the robot teaches Brian social skills.
As Brian and Charles acclimate to each other, the story appears to be about Brian the crank realizing that he is the cause of his own isolation. (Charles helps in one scene by blurting, “You are boring!”) Too soon, however, this intriguing psychological study turns into a programmatic geeks-vs-bullies story that relies on pushing the easiest emotional buttons.
Brian and Charles
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
