Metacritic-Rezensionen

An endlessly charming, funny, and delightfully lo-fi British comedy.

Brian and Charles isn’t striving to be a technical achievement, and it works well as a thoughtful, sentimental, funny, uplifting buddy comedy. It’s quite a feat for a feature debut, and is guaranteed to leave you waiting for what Jim Archer will do next.

It’s all of a piece, and just as charming and engrossing as a silly mockumentary about a robot maturing from boot-up to rebellious teens can be. No, Wales doesn’t come off as anything but grey and repressed and backward. But whatever Brian and Charles don’t do for Welsh tourism they more than make up for in warm, goofy entertainment value.

Comedy is a serious business and it is Earl and Hayward’s deadpan delivery, coupled with Archer’s maintenance of a documentary shooting style in the face of the ridiculous, that ensures the situation generates physical and verbal laughs.

A deceptively unserious movie it may be, but Brian and Charles leaves a serious trace through its pure sense of optimism.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.

The warmth and tenderness with which the film explores the relationship between Brian and his creation are real.

Brian and Charles didn’t need to be a feature. It could have continued to peacefully and joyfully exist as a short, and its material stretches the story thin as a sheet in this extended form. But the charm and fun of its story outweighs a scrawny narrative.

The original Brian and Charles short focused entirely on its titular characters, and it’s clear that was for the best.

Even as the low-key mockumentary Brian and Charles impressively scales down a sci-fi concept to fable size, it neither does much to maintain its oddness nor finds that right mix of comedy and pathos to have much impact.