午夜福利1000集合

Jim Archer

On general release in US/UK cinemas

AMATEUR inventor Brian Gittins has been having a bad time. He is terribly shy, lives alone and has become a favourite target of the local bully, Eddie Tomington (played by Jamie Michie).

He finds consolation in his 鈥渋nventions pantry鈥� (鈥渁 cowshed, really鈥�), from which emerges one ludicrously misconceived invention after another. His heart is in the right place: his tricycle-powered 鈥渇lying cuckoo clock鈥�, for instance, is meant as a service to the village. People would simply have to look up to tell the time. Unhappily, it is already on fire.

Picking through the leavings of fly tippers one day, the ever-restless Brian finds the head of a shop mannequin 鈥� and grows still. The next day, he sets about building something for himself: a robot to keep him company as he grows ever more graceless, ever more brittle, ever more alone.

Brian sprang to life on the stand-up and vlogging circuit trodden by his creator, comedian and actor David Earl. Earl is best known for playing Kevin Twine in Ricky Gervais鈥檚 comedy-drama Derek, and for roles in other Gervais projects such as After Life.

Earl鈥檚 Brian dominates this gentle, fantastical film. His every grin to camera, whenever an invention misbehaves or fails, is a suppressed cry of pain. His every command to his robot (鈥淐harles Petrescu鈥� as the robot has named itself) drips with a conviction of future failure. Brian is a painfully, almost unwatchably weak man. But his fortunes are about to turn.

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Charles (mannequin head, washing machine torso, tweeds from any 1950s BBC documentary) also saw first light on the comedy circuit. Around 2016, Rupert Majendie, a producer who likes to play around with voice-generating software, rang Earl鈥檚 internet radio show, and the pair started riffing in character: Brian, meet Charles.

Then there were three: Earl played Brian, Earl鈥檚 fellow stand-up Chris Hayward inhabited Charles鈥檚 cardboard body and Majendie sat at the back of venues, with his laptop, providing Charles鈥檚 voice. Their first full-length film is this low-budget mockumentary, Brian and Charles, directed by Jim Archer and written by Earl and Hayward (who now plays all of Charles). It was a hit at this year鈥檚 Sundance Film Festival.

Back to the plot. When a thunderstorm brings Charles to life, he speeds through the stages of childhood (鈥淒oes it all stop at the tree?鈥� he asks, staring over Brian鈥檚 wall in rainswept north Wales), and is now determined to make his way to Honolulu 鈥� a place he glimpsed on a TV programme, but can never pronounce.

It is a decision that leads the irrepressible Charles away from Brian鈥檚 protection and, ineluctably, into servitude with his malign neighbours, the Tomingtons.

But the experience of bringing up Charles has changed Brian. He no longer feels alone. He has, quite unwittingly, become a father. The confrontation and crisis that follow are as satisfying and tear-jerking as they are predictable.

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Any robot adaptable enough to offer worthwhile companionship to a human must be considered a person too and be treated as such, or we would be no better than slave owners. Brian is a graceless, bullying creator, but the more his robot proves a companion, the more Brian matures.

And this, I think, is the exciting thing about personal robots: not that they may make our lives easier, but that their existence could challenge us to become better people.