The poster for the remake of Arthur shows three women looming over its smiling ubiquitous star, Russell Brand. There is Greta Gerwig as the illegal tour guide/children’s book writer/ love interest Naomi Quinn whose smile says “I don’t live in Manhattan,”  Helen Mirren as the dowdy but kick-ass nanny Hobson and the performed sexuality from Jennifer Garner who plays his fiancee Susan. Despite facing the ultimatum to finally stop playing around with his sidekick (Luis Guzman) and grow the hell up and marry Susan, he defiantly tells his icy mother (Geraldine James) that he marries when he falls in love. She receives that as childishness and tells him that he stands to lose 900 million pounds.

Arthur’s already had his rich boy antics from the first frame, but the movie didn’t get my attention until hoodlums run out of the city jail, eventually revealing that Arthur bailed them all out. There is some dialogue referring to the harsh and volatile economic times that he might always be oblivious to, since he uses money as confetti. Cue the undeveloped ideas about the parity between rich Arthur and poor everyone else, and the hair-pulling class war, most of it surfacing when it comes to the women in his life defending him from Naomi, whom they see as a gold digging usurper because she’s a poor girl from Queens.

Brand’s Arthur insults, he improvises, he listens. The first two acts of the film has an edgy yet lighthearted approach to male desire – Cars! Women! Party guests! – but the man’s encounter with women actively participates in that desire’s castration or fulfillment. Susan frankly tells him that marriage is a ‘business arrangement,’ in the snappy, officiating way that she does, her whispers to him like whips. Naomi doesn’t really make us laugh but smile, childishly fascinated with Arthur’s weird personal property or home theater system showing classic cartoons, which is probably why they get along so well. The film is punctuated by Arthur calling out, ‘Hobson,’ who has a catchphrase – yay! – telling him to wash his winky in her regular or Darth Vader voice, but mostly she is the straight man to Arthur’s goofs.

The movies starts to fumble visually, like when it incessantly reminds us that it’s set in New York City by showing its giant monuments, again. And when Arthur has to be separated from his surrogate mother. He turns from fun guy who’s never sober to the – we get it, movie-turned-PSA- alcoholic, wasting his life away, walking through a sexy party in slow motion, dying inside. It’s small, unnecessary scenes in the third act that remove the fun that almost made this film unique.

And no, we didn’t need to see Russel brand in his underwear. I’ll explain my reasons if you ask in the comments section.

I did catch the original on television once, since everyone keeps harking back to it. This is an unpopular opinion but I turned off the television, thinking that the original was kind of bland. This remake steps it up as the majority of the cast more than able to handle the glee and comedy, infecting the audience’s emotions like a natural drug.

There are many laughs as well as the cutest opening and closing credits and guest appearances by Scott ‘Pete/Orel’ Adsit and John “PC Guy/You’re Welcome” Hodgman. And remember that this is still a conventional romantic comedy so it’ll try to leap logic to bring Arthur and Naomi back together, despite the difficult hurdles that set them apart. Arthur and Naomi are a good pair assisted by fate, and I did want them, as well as the movie, to succeed. But I’ll leave it to you to decide whether their coupling is earned.

C+

Notes: Rated PG-13 for alcohol use throughout, sexual content, language and some drug references.