Arthur

Anyone familiar with P.G Woodhouse’s famous Jeeves and Wooster characters will immediately recognize the foundational bones of Arthur. In the Jeeves and Wooster stories, an amusing butler with a quick wit plays friend and fixer for an upper class, affable fop who finds himself routinely caught up in the trials and tribulations, such that they are, of the idle rich around the turn of the century. In Arthur, an acerbically witted butler plays father figure and fixer for the titular spoiled son of an astronomically wealthy family who is all too happy to spend his days drinking lavish cocktails, playing with expensive toys, and being driven around town by his chauffeur to pick up prostitutes for meaningless sex. For its 1980s interpretation of Woodhouse’s classic characters, Arthur even borrows the unwanted engagement storyline from Sir Roderick Comes to Lunch.

Arthur, however, seems to miss out on the charm that is a key component to making Jeeves and Wooster stories work. In the BBC adaptation, starring Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, Wooster is a bit of a dandy, but he is a decent guy who just lacks a little worldly maturity thanks to the coddling his family has provided him. Arthur, on the other hand, is an infantilized narcissist. Wooster likes boating hats and worries about which pretty society girls might like him, like a rich but out of touch adult. Despite being in his thirties, Arthur still plays Cowboys and Indians, has a model train set behind the headboard of his bed, and has pinball machines along the walls of his apartment, akin to Tom Hanks’ character from Big: a literal child. This sets a very different dynamic for Arthur over its spiritual predecessor, where Arthur is less of an oblivious but well meaning toff and more of a painfully disconnected man-child.

Hobson, the butler, isn’t much better. Where Jeeves is the king of subtle, underhanded insults and clever gibes that largely come from a place of wishing the best for Wooster, Hobson is played as being constantly annoyed by Arthur’s actions; someone who loathes his master for being an insufferable tosspot. This then about-faces going into the third act, in which Hobson is repositioned as Arthur’s surrogate father which, while not impossible to believe, is done in a really clunky manner. Perhaps this is intended as nuance, but it just reads as inconsistency. The character can’t seem to decide if he hates Arthur for being his rich jerk of a boss or loves Arthur because he helped raise him. He is a bigger snob than Arthur about class, but then hates Arthur for what his class allows him to do and be. He scolds Arthur, hits him, mocks him for almost every aspect of who he is, looks down on his romantic decisions, but then with seemingly no prompting plays matchmaker with him and the very girl he has been bad mouthing. Is he the father Arthur never had: loving, nurturing, and most importantly present? Or is he the fed up staff?

Much of the humor of the movie is intended to come from the torrents of one-liners that pour out of Arthur while he is drunk. For me, at least, these scenes never quite work. The context of the one-liners is frequently an environment where Arthur’s joking attitude is out of place. People just put up with it because he is rich, or his family has power, or he represents a potential customer. The movie opens with one such scene, in fact. Arthur is soliciting a prostitute on the street corner and rather than just pick one and get on with it, he fires off quip after quip while the reaction shots of the two potential options shows their disinterest in his antics, like two waitresses tired of being hit on by pushy customers. I don’t understand why this was shot this way. It actively undermines the potential likeability of Arthur by positioning his jokes not as part of his charm and personality, but something he does that others don’t find all that funny. Combine that with his slurred delivery and the scene reads more as Arthur the drunken lout than Arthur the amiable but misguided wastrel millionaire. This isn’t the only place this kind of drunken joke barrage is done. It repeats at least two or three more times during the movie, and at various stages of Arthur’s maturation and character development, and every time it takes borderline comedy and undercuts it with alcoholism and a disinterested or offended audience. They say you can tell the quality of a potential mate by how they treat waitstaff…

Arthur’s lack of redeeming qualities makes his various romantic entanglements awkward. There is seemingly no reason that either of the girls in his love triangle should be interested in him. Society girl Susan seems to genuinely love him, beyond just the pressure from her father to merge their families, despite the film giving Arthur very few traditionally attractive qualities or giving her any quirky shared interests. Maybe if she liked trains as much as he did, his model kits wouldn’t bother her as much, etc.. Working class Linda’s only interest in him seems to be his money and while she says that she sees a rough diamond she can cut and polish into a jewel, nothing in their interactions really suggests that this is warranted. This makes the central romantic tensions of the story feel empty and the whole thing feel trivial even as the movie is trying to paint itself as something with some bite. At least in Jeeves and Wooster its triviality is worn on its sleeve and therefore is made part of the fun.

There is one moment that really makes Arthur shine, when he performs an impromptu music number on the piano during a party. This brief moment finally shows a tiny piece of why anyone would like him. It lets a certain amount of Dudley Moore’s natural charisma shine through in a real way. The lyrics are amusing, the playing is nice, and he does some fun crowd work that justifies his time as the center of attention at the party. It is also one of the few scenes in which the acting is not playing up Arthur’s drunkenness.

Similarly, when Arthur begins his journey to adulthood, the few scenes of any merit are the ones he has with Hobson in the hospital. The movie somewhat finds its heart here, showing Arthur’s humanity and some amount of maturity, although even here he shows some self centeredness, initially bringing gifts that reflect what he likes rather than what the butler likes. These scenes are also free of alcohol. One might think, then, that the story is establishing giving up alcohol, or at least binge drinking, to be symbolic of Arthur’s journey to adulthood. Except this is then undercut by a return to drunkenness, which importantly is not presented as a backslide, setting up the final act… in which he is also drunk.

In the end, perhaps the most apt comparison I could make for Arthur isn’t Jeeves and Wooster but Pineapple Express. This movie is a weed comedy but with booze instead of marijuanna. The plot is thin and largely irrelevant. The comedy seems to revolve around “Haha he’s drunk” in the same way a Cheech and Chong movie revolves around “Haha they’re high.” The arrested development and carefree life in the bosom of over indulgent family members is reminiscent of Grandma’s Boy, just swap weed for booze and video games for race cars and prostitutes. As someone who despises weed comedies because they lamely substitute the mere mention of the drug and its effect for actual punchlines, this movie doesn’t work for me for similar reasons. Since I didn’t laugh at the booziness, felt kinship with the exasperated recipients of Arthur’s torrents of one-liners, and failed to find interest or value in either the romantic or platonic/familial relationships in the movie, there wasn’t much left to enjoy. A few brief scenes of charisma and heart lost in a sea of unfunny mediocrity.

Would Recommend: If drunken antics are hilarious to you, even when you are sober.

Would Not Recommend: If you have experience suffering due to entitled customers while working a service job.