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Arthur Newman (2013)
Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Anne Heche. Directed by Dante Ariola.
I wouldn’t have believed that Colin Firth and Emily Blunt could make a bad movie together, but Arthur Newman is pretty bad. It starts off promisingly, with Firth as a divorcee named Wallace Avery. Unhappy with his job and estranged from his son, he tells everyone he’s going on a solo camping trip for the weekend and fakes his own death. He’s got a plan to make his old self disappear and to reappear as Arthur Newman, a golf pro at a private club in another state.
Circumstances hurl him into the company of a much younger woman (played by Blunt) who asks to be called Mike, also the owner of ID cards that might not have been originally issued to her. They travel through several states, breaking into people’s homes to play a strange game of pretend, assuming the personalities of the homes’ owners and making love as these characters, never as themselves.
It’s all downhill from there. Firth and Blunt put forth a decent effort, but the journey one way seems leisurely and fun while the journey back is sudden and unconvincing. Whatever it is that sets Arthur and Mike on their bizarre path is never dealt with in satisfying enough a manner to justify what they do next. I can’t even tell if the ending is supposed to be happy or not, or even what other choices the characters are supposed to have had.
Colin Firth has the ability as an actor to really let a viewer into his head, even when he’s keeping his mouth shut. His scenes with Julianne Moore in A Single Man are almost magical in their revelation. There’s really no reason Mike couldn’t have been as well-conceived a character as Moore’s, but there’s so little there that Firth seems to have nothing to work with. It feels like a ripoff.
Small complaint: I wonder if it was necessary to set this in America and to make Firth and Blunt act with American accents. Seems like a waste of good British talent to me.
Not recommended despite its terrific lead actors. The writing feels incomplete and the direction is sloppy.
4/10 (IMDb rating)
44/100 (Criticker rating)
Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Anne Heche. Directed by Dante Ariola.
I wouldn’t have believed that Colin Firth and Emily Blunt could make a bad movie together, but Arthur Newman is pretty bad. It starts off promisingly, with Firth as a divorcee named Wallace Avery. Unhappy with his job and estranged from his son, he tells everyone he’s going on a solo camping trip for the weekend and fakes his own death. He’s got a plan to make his old self disappear and to reappear as Arthur Newman, a golf pro at a private club in another state.
Circumstances hurl him into the company of a much younger woman (played by Blunt) who asks to be called Mike, also the owner of ID cards that might not have been originally issued to her. They travel through several states, breaking into people’s homes to play a strange game of pretend, assuming the personalities of the homes’ owners and making love as these characters, never as themselves.
It’s all downhill from there. Firth and Blunt put forth a decent effort, but the journey one way seems leisurely and fun while the journey back is sudden and unconvincing. Whatever it is that sets Arthur and Mike on their bizarre path is never dealt with in satisfying enough a manner to justify what they do next. I can’t even tell if the ending is supposed to be happy or not, or even what other choices the characters are supposed to have had.
Colin Firth has the ability as an actor to really let a viewer into his head, even when he’s keeping his mouth shut. His scenes with Julianne Moore in A Single Man are almost magical in their revelation. There’s really no reason Mike couldn’t have been as well-conceived a character as Moore’s, but there’s so little there that Firth seems to have nothing to work with. It feels like a ripoff.
Small complaint: I wonder if it was necessary to set this in America and to make Firth and Blunt act with American accents. Seems like a waste of good British talent to me.
Not recommended despite its terrific lead actors. The writing feels incomplete and the direction is sloppy.
4/10 (IMDb rating)
44/100 (Criticker rating)