Frog And Toad Go To See "Arthur"

On Saturday evening, several DMTC friends were to gather at Old Spaghetti Factory, so I prepared to meet them for dinner, but Joe The Plumber called on the phone. He wasn't far away; he was in the driveway, and he needed to talk.

The gist was, he needed to stay away from certain bad influences that evening, and my company was the most-likely to help him accomplish his goal. So, at my recommendation, we set out to see the newly-released movie "Arthur", starring Russell Brand (and Sacramento's sweetheart, Greta Gerwig). But first, I kept the dinner appointment with my friends.

The Old Spaghetti Factory was immersed in a constellation of Second Saturday activities (I had forgotten about Second Saturday, and the weather was at last warm enough to make the event a real happening). My friends were going to see Light Opera Theatre of Sacramento's "Iolanthe" at the 24th Street Theater, and ordinarily I would have gone too, but not this night. Dinner was a bit rushed, but I was able to make it to the movie theater at Arden Fair Mall in time to meet Joe and catch the previews.

The movie "Arthur" was quite entertaining. Russell Brand made for a funny leading man, and Jennifer Garner was also very funny as his fiancee. Regrettably, I was so sated by spaghetti that I briefly napped when Greta Gerwig made her first appearance, and thus lost a bit of movie continuity at the start. Nevertheless, she had several opportunities to show her superior acting talents. The movie seemed to win broad audience approval. Lots of laughter was heard in the theater. I want to go back and look at the 1980 movie in order to compare it to this one (my memory is that the 1980 movie was not as good as this, but I need to review it to make sure). Joe liked the movie as well.

Interestingly, the movie makes several references and analogies to the children's-book friendship of Frog and Toad and how they cared for each other (this is all post-1980, and so it couldn't have been in the original movie, could it?) The analogy seemed to hold between Joe and myself too. I was concerned about him tonight. Tonight, a movie was the best diversion for Frog and Toad.

I've been a bit bewildered by the bad reviews for this movie. Part of it is lingering affection for Dudley Moore, but part of it is a sort of constipated contempt for the American movie-goer's ability to sustain the necessary element of fantasy to enjoy the movie.

Ignore the bad reviews. Here is the best example I have of a bad, bad review:

And yet this remake of Arthur fails, starkly and completely, either to capture the magic of the original or to create any of its own. The problem with this movie goes deeper than the casting or performances, deeper than the script by Peter Baynham (who collaborated on the Borat and Bruno films, as well as the BBC series I'm Alan Partridge) or the direction by Winer (the co-executive producer* of the acclaimed ABC series Modern Family). Sure, the jokes could be funnier and the execution crisper, but at heart a 2011 Arthur just doesn't make sense. Alcohol and money mean completely different things in the movies now than they did 30 years ago—basically, they're both a lot less fun.

Arthur's dilemma—he must marry a stuck-up society girl chosen by his family (Jennifer Garner) or lose his vast fortune overnight—doesn't scan in a world where wealth and respectability have long since amicably split, and a dissolute heir only stands to gain in status by misbehaving publicly. (A miscast and, for the first time, annoying Greta Gerwig plays the strangely infantilized pixie from Queens who turns Arthur's head on the eve of his wedding.) The recession—and, in a wider context, the massive upward transfer of wealth that's occurred in the 30 years since the Reagan era—have made the notion of an idle but lovable billionaire harder to take. And above all, the spread of AA culture and the recognition of alcoholism as a disease have made drunk jokes—a comic staple in Dudley Moore's day—seem gauche and unfunny. This Arthur acknowledges the recession exactly once and has its hero compensate for this staggering financial injustice by taking cash out of an ATM and throwing it at a dozen or so hangers-on. And when Arthur 2.0 goes to a church-basement AA meeting and owns up to his addiction issues—well, more power to Brand for quelling his real-life demons, but I'd rather watch Moore painstakingly balance a glass of whisky on the fender of his vintage car.