Brian and Charles (2022)
Directed by Jim Archer
An endearing outlier, Brian lives alone in a Welsh valley, inventing oddball contraptions that seldom work. After finding a discarded mannequin head, Brian gets an idea. Three days, a washing machine, and sundry spare parts later, he’s invented Charles, an artificially intelligent robot who learns English from a dictionary and proves a charming, cheeky companion. Before long, however, Charles also develops autonomy. Intrigued by the wider world — or whatever lies beyond the cottage where Brian has hidden him away — Charles craves adventure.
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What critics say influenced Brian and Charles
The ending, which pushes the robot/man suspension-of-disbelief aspect into the stratosphere, is nevertheless a heart-warmer and itself vaguely reminiscent of a peculiar plot point in director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's charming Amélie , another title in what might be termed the silly but soaring mystical movie canon, albeit without Amélie ’s dazzling soundtrack.
We’ve been deluged with found-footage horror films ever since The Blair Witch Project , but mockumentary comedies have been largely neglected ever since Christopher Guest left the game, notwithstanding Taika Waititi’s amusing What We Do in the Shadows .
Stylistically similar to 2014’s What We Do In The Shadows , this supposed human-interest documentary follows the exploits of Brian (David Earl), a Welsh recluse who spends his lonely days tinkering with inventions that never quite manifest into something revolutionary.
Archer employs a similar mockumentary style to Clement and Waititi’s 2014 vampire comedy, What We Do in the Shadows , albeit to a less bawdy effect.
The core of Brian and Charles is a story about the importance of friendship, imbued with a real edge of genuine, dry British humor—kind of like Withnail & I if you were to replace Withnail with a robot who was built from a washing machine.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence features a robot who yearns for genuine, human motherly love.
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Brian and Charles is one of those fundamentally odd movies, like Swiss Army Man or The Lighthouse .