Brian and Charles
FOCUS FEATURESThere is something to be said for either the eyesight or mental quality of those who think the latter half of this eponymous duo looks a bit like Jim Broadbent. They do. So, it matters not if the mental faculties are there or the eyesight is starting to fade because Charles of Brian and Charles does have that get-up about him. That is presumably not the effect or tone director Jim Archer was gunning for with this odd piece about a lonely man finding kinship with a homemade robot. A craving not just for freedom or the exhibition of it but an active desire to filter out the world, to experience it from the self-taught understudies. Brian and Charles is a scarcity, an intimate and funny experience that builds from the uncanny.
Despite a relatively unique angle and wholesome British comedy platform to take in, the oddball role David Earl writes for himself here is not entirely out of the ordinary. Brian and Charles makes the unbelievable feel ordinary and the oddities feel unfortunately drab. Strangeness lingers; it overtakes the comedic moments that should follow. Crackpot inventors attempting to fly around with bicycles made to tell the time or holding hostage to a fridge full of butter is a concept that works for those that enjoy Earl’s branch of weirdo humour. It isn’t much different from Dan Renton Skinner’s work on Shooting Stars as his character Angelos Epithemiou or the interesting weirdo shtick Joe Wilkinson presents as his image.
This is an image-set piece that hopes to highlight a weird coming-of-age style for more than a handful of British comedians. Brian and Charles holds within it the odd bond, the flat calligraphy and unmoving camera felt in other oddball bits and pieces such as Frank. Ordinary people take pity on someone rather than providing care. To some extent, there is a rendition of Earl's work on the Ricky Gervais-led Derek, which holds a vaguely similar style. That is the problem of playing one character across a variety of mediums. Eventually, it turns to pastiche. Only rarely does it not. Rifling through bin bags, bickering with a self-made robot about sitting in the front of a van, it all feels strange but never beyond what would be expected for a pairing of Earl and Chris Hayward. Their bits together are the obvious highlight.
Caring for the inanimate is much easier than looking out or feeling attached to the living. Film has represented that through many similarly strange experiences. Swiss Army Man provided Paul Dano a dead Daniel Radcliffe to converse with, Moon gives intimacy through detached voices and understands the spiral of it. Brian and Charles feels somewhere in-between. While it may be easier to understand a projected image, something that the creator understands, it just isn’t right. Morally, ethically or publicly. An oddball is that. An oddball. A perspective or commentary on them cannot change because audiences and creatives perceive, rightly, that people who build robots out of washing machines and mannequins have a few screws loose, even if their self-built project does not.