Shown: 6 September 2023
Exminster Film Club Rating: 61%
- Date of release: 2022
- Running time: 1h 30m
- Director: Jim Archer
- Writers: David Earl and Chris Hayward
- Country: UK
- Language: English
- Links: IMDB Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic BBFC Official Film Website
Brian and Charles Plot Synopsis
Brian and Charles follows Brian, a lonely inventor in rural Wales, who spends his days building quirky, unconventional contraptions that seldom work. Undeterred by his lack of success, Brian attempts his biggest project yet. Three days, a washing machine, and various spare parts later, he’s invented Charles, an artificially intelligent robot who learns English from a dictionary and has an obsession with cabbages. What follows is a humorous and entirely heartwarming story about friendship, family, finding love, and letting go.
Film Reviews
If themes about the importance of friendship, hope, and love land a bit on the nose, there’s no denying Brian and Charles takes an innovative approach to delivering them, even if — see above — the tack is brazenly metaphorical. Yet its distinctive charms are resonant enough to offset a slender story in what nevertheless amounts to a sweet and earnest, modern-day fable.
Kim Huges – Original Cin
It isn’t easy to develop a sketch-length idea into a feature film and not easy to pivot from ironic comedy into dark Straw Dogs-style menace, and then into a sweet-natured happy ending. But Earl, Hayward and Archer have managed it. It’s the bromance of the year.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian