Slow as cool molasses, and featuring a couple
of foreigners playing Americans… as per usual… we have in
'Arthur Newman' the directorial debut of one Dante
Ariola. Yes, 'Arthur Newman' screams 'Indie' from the
simple real world sets, the somewhat limited storyline, and
the folksy music, and yes, its pace will force the average
viewer to focus… the below average viewer will be asleep… but
if you needed to foreigners to play Americans, you can't do
much better than Colin Firth and Emily Blunt, now can
you? And it is the presence of Mr. Firth and Ms. Blunt
that somehow, someway, drags this slow moving drama kicking
and screaming across the finish line.
Wallace Avery (Firth) is one miserable dude. He has no
job, he's divorced but has a girlfriend (Anne Heche) though he
seems to neglect her with his awesome boredom at every turn,
he has a child from this divorce (Lucas Hedges) but this kid
shows his old man about as much respect as one would show week
old road kill. Ah… but Wallace has a way out of this
terrible existence of his. While the nebbish Wallace
doesn't look like the kind of cat who would know a seedy dude
that can fake an entire identity, he does. And now
Arthur Newman is born and Wallace Avery has swum into the
Atlantic Ocean… or Pacific… I can't remember, and doesn't
exist anymore.
Now this should be exciting! My man has murdered off his
old self, created a whole new persona, completely reinventing
himself! Uh… no. He's actually the same dude, just
wearing a pink polo shirt. From my vantage point he
might as well had stayed Wallace Avery. But then he
wouldn't have met the incredibly damaged McKella, going by the
name of Mike for short (Blunt). Sure, she looks pretty
messed right now, obviously on some kind mind altering drug,
looking like warmed over death while lounging by the pool of
Arthur's motel, but after Arthur takes her to the hospital to
get her a little help and a stomach pump, Mike cleans up
amazingly well. We should all be so lucky to stumble
upon drugged out, self-destructive, kleptomaniacal manic
depressives that look like this.
We are glad that Arthur found Mike because at
least Mike knows how to push the envelope a little bit.
She's already figured out that Arthur is on the run from his
past, as is she, so they go on a little road trip. With
some pulling and prodding from Mike, these two proceed to
break into people's homes, put on their clothes pretending to
be somebody else, and then have sex. It's a little
strange.
The long range plan for these two is to make it to Terre Haute
Indiana where Arthur, a former golf pro as Wallace, will join
a country club as the resident golf pro and start his new
awesome life. In Terre Haute Indiana. In between
all of this we get to see the remnants of the life Wallace
left behind in the son that wishes he had a better a dad and
the girlfriend who loves him despite the fact he seemed to be
the worst boyfriend ever. And we also get to see, after
our wild couple make to Terre Haute, no matter where you go,
there you are. No escaping it.
I imagine, when crafting a character based drama such as
'Arthur Newman', the key in making it work is creating
dynamic, interesting characters that the audience cares about
in some way. Love them, despise them, the characters
should move us into being invested into what they are going
through on the screen. As good an actor as Colin Firth
is, he wasn't able to interest me in either character he was
playing, maybe because they were pretty much identical to each
other, maybe because I couldn't relate to or sympathize with
his plight, or maybe because Arthur and Wallace were both kind
of assholes. I did not care about Arthur Newman.
At least until we get to the very end when we have a little
bit of a twist to chew on and I think we finally get some
insight on the character of Wallace / Arthur, but for the most
part Wallace / Arthur was stuck playing straight man to Emily
Blunt's character of Mike.
Now building on what we mentioned before about being invested
in a character, we were more vested into the plight of Mike,
though we certainly didn't like Mike who was not all that
pleasant to be around, no matter how pretty she might've
been. Thus with 'Arthur Newman', we are kind of trapped
hanging with a character we didn't care about, connected to
the hip to a character we did not like, with both of these
characters existing within a narrative that was in no hurry to
go anywhere in particular… Which didn't leave me with the best
feeling for 'Arthur Newman' when the final credits got around
to rolling.
That being said, this could more of an effect of personal
preference as both Colin Firth and Emily Blunt are actors more
than capable of placing a character on screen exactly as they
want you to see them, so another watcher of this film might
have a different feel for these characters, and as such a
different feel for the film. Because how you feel about
these characters, as they dominate this entire film, is how
you will ultimately feel about this movie.
For me, I could've done without these guys, and as a byproduct
of this, I could've done without 'Arthur Newman'.
