Film / Arthur (2011)

Arthur is a 2011 American Romantic Comedy directed by Jason Winer. It is a remake of the original film of the same name starring Dudley Moore.

A drunken bon vivant and heir to nearly $1 billion, Arthur Basch (Russell Brand) is wasting his life with silly antics. His mother Vivienne (Geraldine James) threatens to disinherit him if he does not settle down with the woman of her choosing, her assistant Susan Johnson (Jennifer Garner). Arthur rebels and must live like a plebian amongst the people, where he finds and connects with a quirky tour guide, Naomi Quinn (Greta Gerwig).

This film provides examples of:

• Adaptational Alternate Ending: In the original film, Arthur gets his happy ending when he rejects Susan and Martha declares he shouldn't have to be working class, which frees him to marry Linda and keep his fortune. In this version, Arthur rejects Susan BUT Naomi rejects him, too hurt by previous events. To become worthy of her, he spends six months sobering up, reconciling with his mother, and finding his place in the family business, whereupon he is able to reconcile with Naomi and thus gets his happy ending.
• Adaptational Villainy: Susan Johnson's main drawbacks in the original are that she's boring and holds a smothering I Can Change My Beloved attitude. In this version, she's a ruthless Gold Digger who's desperate to marry into "respectable" money and "seduces"/attacks Arthur in his bedroom in a major setpiece.
• Adaptation Name Change: Linda Marolla becomes Naomi Quinn, and it's mentioned in passing that Arthur's father is named Gerald rather than Stanford.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Arthur's sense of humor/what he finds funny is substantially different. In the original, Arthur loves to make silly jokes and whimsical observations — and hopes others laugh at them. In the remake, Arthur snarks about everyone and everything, isn't afraid to insult people at length, and doesn't care how others respond. His Manchild antics are also Denser and Wackier, and he's less honest with Naomi about his Arranged Marriage situation (to his later grief). He also gets a Freudian Excuse for his alcoholism (his perfectly healthy father died young, leaving him with an absent/distant mother), whereas 1981!Arthur boozes because it's fun and helps him cope with the terminally stuffy world he lives in.
  • Arthur's chauffeur Bitterman is simply pleasant and professional in the original film, if sometimes disapproving of his employer's antics; in this version, he's effectively Arthur's Sidekick in wacky escapades.
  • Linda is a Deadpan Snarker who's quick-witted, a pretty good liar, and likes Arthur for who he is. Remake Counterpart Naomi is demure and dreamy, less snarky, and far more worried about what Arthur's doing to himself with his self-destructive lifestyle.
  • Due to being Demoted to Extra, Linda's father is simply a friendly widower this time out.
• Adapted Out: Martha Bach is dropped, due to Vivianne taking over both her role and Stanford's from the original.
• The Alcoholic: Obviously, given the source material. But Arthur justifies his drinking because of his father. His father was a frugal man, had no excesses, walked everywhere he went... and dropped dead of a heart attack at age 44. The lesson Arthur took from this tragedy is "Why bother to take care of yourself?"
• Ambiguously Bi: Arthur makes references to being caught in affairs with transvestites and to visiting gay bars.
• Arranged Marriage: Vivienne arranges Susan to marry Arthur for the sake of the family company. She even tells Arthur he could keep Naomi as The Mistress.
• Binge Montage / Drunken Montage: At the top of the third act, the despondent Arthur goes through a merging of these tropes in the wake of Hobson's death. First, he's getting drunk by himself in his penthouse, and then tells Bitterman that it's time to throw a party because he's tired of being sad. Cut to the party, and while the guests surrounding him are happily living it up and shown in fast motion, Arthur slowly wanders about, no happier than he was before and interacting with no one, and the same sad song is playing on the soundtrack.
• Brick Joke: Lots of them, from Arthur's fear of horses to his magnetic bed, though The Batmobile takes the cake.
• Broken Bird: A male subversion. Arthur seems to enjoy his frivolous lifestyle, but he acts out against his mother by spending obscene amounts of money on useless things (his apartment is full of suits of armor, a glittery camel, a phone-booth-turned-fish-tank) and by drinking vodka like water.
• Composite Character: Vivianne Bach is a composite of the original film's Stanford Bach (bad relationship with son, stuffy) and Martha Bach (comes up with the Marry Them All idea with regard to Susan and Naomi, tells Susan and Burt to stop hurting Arthur at the wedding).
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits are designed to look like the pages of a children's picture book, with illustrations of Arthur and Naomi traveling through New York City.
• Decoy Protagonist: Despite Jennifer Garner being heavily featured alongside Russell Brand in the publicity campaign for the film, she plays Susan Johnson — the woman that Arthur doesn't want to marry.
• Demoted to Extra: Naomi's father only appears briefly in two scenes, and doesn't even have a proper name.
• Denser and Wackier: The comic tone, compared to the original film. Arthur's Establishing Character Moment in 1981 has him picking up a Streetwalker from his Rolls-Royce and then taking her to the Plaza Hotel restaurant and from there to his townhouse. In 2011, to go to his mother's black-tie fundraiser, he and Bitterman dress as Batman and Robin and drive the Batman Forever Batmobile in that direction, ultimately crashing into the golden bull sculpture on Wall Street. Both are subsequently arrested but Arthur not only posts bail for himself and Bitterman but everybody else who was at the police station. When the press outside the station questions his "frivolous spending" during a recession, he withdraws $78,000 from the nearest ATM he can find and hands cash out to everyone, some of whom are party girls he takes back to his penthouse with him.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: As in the original, Naomi turns down the enormous check Arthur offers her. But later, when they're talking about how she's found a publisher for her picture book, Susan overhears and reveals that Bach Industries just bought that publishing house. Naomi realizes that Arthur did this so she could get published, and is deeply upset because she believed that her book was bought on its own merits.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Due to the Adaptational Alternate Ending, Arthur goes through this in the third act.
• Establishing Character Moment: At the under-construction office their first meeting is held in, Burt Johnson slowly emerges from behind the tarp Arthur was playfully shooting nails at with a nail gun while waiting...with some of those nails sticking out of him. Yet he appears not to notice this. When a very nervous Arthur points his situation out, Burt explains that framing nails don't hurt much and calmly pulls them out.
• Flexibility Equals Sex Ability: One of the prostitutes hired by Arthur is complimented due to her incredible flexibility.
• Gender Flip: Twice over. Hobson is now Arthur's nanny and played by Helen Mirren, and it's Arthur's mother rather than father who's pushing him towards marrying Susan.
• Gold Digger: Susan Johnson, subverted in that she is already quite wealthy... just not as wealthy as Arthur and the upper crust caste system she wants to leap to the forefront of.
• Grand Romantic Gesture: Arthur and Naomi get the latter out of trouble during their Meet Cute by claiming their first date was a private dinner in the heart of Grand Central Station, with acrobats performing, etc. Arthur actually arranges all of this for their actual first date, down to PEZ for dinner.
• Hard-Work Montage: Arthur's reluctant preparations for his wedding are intercut with Naomi working on her picture book.
• Implausible Deniability: When the Dylan's Candy Bar supervisor asks Arthur if he has been freely eating the store's wares as has been reported, he turns to him — revealing bright blue candy smeared around his mouth — and says no.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Vivienne and several of her employers and clients see Arthur as a horrible inheritor to the family corporation. Vivienne plans to have him married to her assistant Susan just so Susan is able to run the company in his stead.
• Informed Attribute: Arthur's mother and Hobson both lament his frivolous lifestyle because they know how intelligent he is, and his mother's belief that he will never grow up sets the plot of the movie in motion, suggesting that he may be a case of Obfuscating Stupidity. But he's depicted as being extremely Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense — unable to make a cup of tea without hurting himself fairly badly or know that working at a candy store does not entitle one to eat candy as they please — and doesn't act especially intelligently at any point onscreen. The closest the story gets to showing him as intelligent is establishing that during the six months he spends cleaning himself up, he finds his place in the family company at last, but this takes place offscreen.
• Logo Joke: The Warner Brothers shield appears to be floating in golden liquor.

• Love at First Sight: Arthur bumps into Naomi while she's giving a tour at Grand Central Station. As he watches her continue on, briefly glancing back at him, this happens to him.
• Meet Cute: Having bumped into each other and he having fallen in Love at First Sight with her, Arthur joins Naomi's tour group and from there helps get her out of trouble with the police over her not being a licensed tour guide, by claiming they're a couple and have a history with the place.
• Manly Tears / Men Don't Cry: Just before the wedding, Arthur is reduced to tears over Hobson's note. While Burt Johnson catches him crying and and tells him to stop because of the latter trope, Arthur's tears firmly fall under the former one.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When Arthur falls in Love at First Sight with Naomi, the underscore plays an instrumental of "Arthur's Theme", which later appears in a more uptempo form during their first date at Grand Central Station.
  • Also in Arthur's collection of famous cars? The Rolls-Royce that belonged to his 1981 counterpart!
  • When Naomi meets Arthur at the hospital and he asks about her meeting with Hobson earlier, she snarks that they meet weekly to shoplift from Bergdorf Goodman, referencing the Meet Cute in the original film.
  • A more heartfelt one that falls under spoiler territory: Steve Gordon, the writer-director of the original film, died at the age of 44. In this version, Arthur's father died at 44.
  • The film was even shipped to theaters under the code name "On the Rocks", the subtitle of the original film's sequel.
• Named by the Adaptation: Along with the Gender Flip Hobson gets a first name — Lillian — in this version.
• Nouveau Riche: Burt Johnson, Susan's father. He doesn't seem to mind his humble beginnings, but Susan is deeply ashamed of them, leading to her plot to marry Arthur.
• Race Lift: Bitterman, Arthur's chauffeur, was played by the African-American actor Ted Ross in the 1981 film; here he's played by Puerto Rican performer Luis Guzman.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • When Arthur tries going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he finds it so depressing that he declines to introduce himself. Hobson, who's with him, stays behind as he begins to leave and speaks for him in an indirect example of this trope: "Hello, I'm Lillian Hobson and I'm an alcoholic", proceeding to detail how "she's" leaning on a Freudian Excuse to justify their drinking, which is only fun up until the hangovers and vomiting.
  • Naomi delivers one to Arthur when she learns he arranged for Bach Industries to buy a publishing house so she could become a published author, telling him that she wanted to earn that — but then, he wouldn't understand that idea because he's never earned anything.
• Rich Bitch: Arthur's mother Vivianne to an extent, and Susan to the extreme - she's already wealthy, but sets her sights on Arthur because his name brings prestige she wants from high society.

  Arthur: [to Susan] I really think you are dark and twisted on the inside, and I tried my best to bugger it out of you but I'm pretty sure it's still there.

• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Arthur comes off as this, though he has good reason to. When he attempts an actual job at Dylan's Candy Bar, he is quickly demoted from cashier to stocking when he can't figure out the register. Then he helps himself to the candy when he isn't just giving it away. Then he pays a guy in a gummi bear costume $10,000 to wear his suit and frolic around the store, at which point his supervisor gives up and fires him. He even manages to hurt himself while preparing a cup of tea for Hobson.
• Running Gag:
  • Arthur's collection of famous pop culture cars, which he enjoys being driven around in: the Batmobile, the time-travelling DeLorean, the General Lee, the Mystery Machine...
  • Arthur likes to describe random people as resembling alternative versions of celebrities or fictional characters: "Lesbian Simon and Garfunkel", "Japanese John Lennon", "Little Orphan Annie, but a man", etc.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Linda's counterpart Naomi appears only for a moment at the beginning of it, likely because her actress (Greta Gerwig) was not as big a name as those playing Hobson (Helen Mirren) and Susan (Jennifer Garner), at least not at the time. In fact, she not only gets lesser billing than both of them, she's not even on the poster while Mirren and Garner are. By comparison, Liza Minnelli was second-billed in the original film and its sequel.
• Stealth Pun: One of the first things you see in the movie is Arthur and his chauffeur crashing the Batmobile into the famous golden bull on Wall Street. Cut to his mother's fundraiser, where a man is saying they're not worried about a market crash.
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • The heirloom diamond engagement ring Arthur presents to Susan looks, to him, like a tiny ice rink. When Naomi sees it much later, she makes the same comparison.
  • Hobson, tasked to attend to Naomi while Arthur fends off Susan's advances, is surprised to find Naomi not only thrilled by Arthur's private movie theater that exclusively screens cartoons but also recognizes the specific Pepe Le Pew short playing at the time, noting a particular gag that's coming up. In the denouement, as Arthur buys a copy of Naomi's just-published book, he's using a Pepe Le Pew coin purse, suggesting he's also a fan of that character.
• Time-Compression Montage: As the denouement begins, a montage covers six months passing by focusing on Arthur's Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as he sobers up for good.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Susan is striving to be this by marrying her way into the Bach family.
• Waiting for a Break: Naomi wants to be a picture book author, but to pay the bills she is giving unlicensed tours of Grand Central Station. Unlike Linda's acting ambitions in the original film, which made her an excellent liar as needed, this trope ends up being key to the plot when Arthur arranges for his family business to buy a publishing company specifically so it can publish her book, without telling Naomi. She's crushed to realize what he's done because it means she didn't earn it.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Nearly all of Arthur's emotional troubles stem from his awful mother (he calls her by her first name, Vivianne) and the fact his perfectly healthy father died suddenly at the age of 44, when Arthur was 3. By the end of the film, he openly considers his nanny Hobson to be his real mother. Vivianne comes to respect Arthur for standing up for himself at the wedding — and revealing Susan's true nature to her in the process — and they subsequently reconcile offscreen while he's cleaning himself up.

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