Sometimes it seems that the cinema is ashamed to put jokes in its plots, let alone make a total comedy from start to finish. Producers tend to anticipate the possible reaction on social networks and irony about their own humor, as being very aware that these are situations that cannot occur in the real world. Actors looking up after being bumped, awkward silences after a pun, explanations of the joke to make sure no one thinks the characters are so stupid… The honesty of the humor seems completely lost, but, in the end, it only takes a little movie to recover the healthiest laugh at the same time that it warms our hearts (a little).
dancing the robot
‘Brian and Charles’ begins as a mockumentary about which they never give us more information but he perverts his own system when he wants, without affecting the viewer. Although the film suddenly changes to a more conventional film format, it does not feel strange or incongruous at any time, perhaps because there are parts of it (especially in its third act) in which you have to have a camera on your shoulder and interviews would have been pernicious. And nothing happens: it’s organic and tiny, like the whole movie itself.
The characters in ‘Brian and Charles’ aspire to be real, yes, but they live in a magical reality environment where robots can have artificial intelligence and washing machine body, the invention of an android capable of reasoning does not go around the world and the only thing that changes the life of its inventor is in the emotional part. Nor is he in the least interested in presenting you with a science-fiction world in which this is possible, nor is it necessary: an extroverted gentleman creates a robot that is the antithesis of that of ‘M3gan’, with a washing machine body and a mask that he has found by there. What more rationality do you need?
In a time when unnecessarily complex stories are rewarded, both plot and emotionally, it is comforting to see a film like this, simple in intentions and plot but not for that negligible or unoriginal. He wants to tell a simple but emotional story with three main characters that is impossible to get lost in and you don’t need any context to see it. An oasis, a hot chocolate, a tape as pleasant as it is funny that you don’t need to aspire to more.
my body is a washing machine
But ‘Brian and Charles’ wouldn’t work as well as it does if it weren’t for an exquisite design of the robotic protagonist, who is both grotesque and charmingWith rebellious adolescent goodness at her heart and a voice with almost no dramatic inflections that knows how to dance, she finds it hard to shut up and little by little he is gaining human qualities that make him more of a person than many of those who live in the small town in Wales where the film takes place.
This is where the film slips a bit: his antagonist is a hopeless villain whose only motivation for doing evil is… well, enjoying doing it. With the emotional work that the script has in presenting Brian’s two main relationships (with Charles, his robot-son, and Hazel, his girlfriend), the villain has too many extremes and lacks a bit of gray: He is not believable and his appearances are nothing more than a Marvel villain from the 60s. A small blur in a film, on the other hand, relatively extraordinary.
Yes, ‘Brian and Charles’ is small and simple, but it’s exactly what it wants to be. I know refuses to deceive anyone. Like her humor, she is honest and not ashamed of being a charming film that is not going to change your life but with which it is inevitable to spend a good time laughing out loud with characters that move between strangeness and marginality, but whom the film never judges. It is a very different proposal from what we are used to seeing, surrounded by bombastic films that try to leave an emotional residue, but not for that reason negligible: sometimes you just need to see movies like this.
The complexity of the simple
‘Brian and Charles’ is kind, dwarf, full of heart, with a main character as noble as it is strange and a tone that seems easy to achieve but is not: after all, the humor that exudes throughout the footage has the exact point of rarity so as not to exclude any viewer in this defense of the strange and one’s own personality. She is charming, pretty, unique and with enviable designs. so much that is totally exposed to malicious criticism.
Like Brian, its protagonist, the film knows exactly who he is and what he wants to do. He does not try to hide himself with more complex layers and, by exposing himself so fully in his intentions and having no interpretations other than the literal one, it’s easy to throw poison darts. But, deep down, it’s like mistreating someone honest who has never wronged anyone and whose intentions and achievements are as simple as they are admirable. He wouldn’t.
This is Jim Archer’s first film, and he has achieved something that is not so common these days: combine a gentle comedy with a unique and personal tone, showing along the way a film that never tries to disguise itself as what it is not and refuses to mask comedy with a mix of genres. Yes, it’s true, it fails (especially in its third act) but it never stops being this Adorable and charismatic little gem whose biggest crime is not being more than she wants to be.