June 1, 2023

The second annual June Swoon gets underway today with the first film from 2022 that I had not seen. Some of these film I have been anxious to watch, but I have pushed it off until June came around. This film, which wound up on critic Dan Murrell’s top ten best list of 2022, was the comedy film, Brian and Charles.

Brian (David Earl) was a lonely and isolated inventor who was struggling after a particularly harsh winter in Wales. To combat the loneliness, Brian created a robot named Charles (Chris Hayward). Amazingly, Charles worked and the twosome became close friends.

However, Charles began to feel the need to expand his horizons and travel outside of Brian’s house, which made Brian nervous, afraid of what people would think and of the reprisals of a local bully, Eddie (Jamie Michie).

Brian and Charles was a funny, heart-warming story of two friends, one of which happens to be a robot with his torso made out of a washing machine. It is a weird, eccentric movie that was a lot of fun to watch. The center of it, of course, was the relationship between Brian and Charles. Charles was like a child, hard headed at times and other times filled with wonder for the world. Brian tried to keep Charles isolated, but it was clear that things were about to change.

It was also strange as several times Brian turned to the camera and spoke to it, breaking the fourth wall. It wasn’t just Brian either as Charles addressed the audience, and even Eddie looked toward the camera at a certain point of the story. There was even a moment when Brian was rushing out of his house that he told someone (a cameraman, perhaps?) to get out of the way. It was a quirky and odd trait of this movie that kept it feeling like a documentary of some sort.

Brian was given a love interest in Hazel (Louise Brealey) who added a human feel to Brian. Their relationship was sweet and felt very sincere, considering the movie included a giant robot that liked to dance and wanted to go to Honalulu.

I found myself laughing quite a bit and the film was very wholesome and smart. We are kicking of the June Swoon 2 with a definite winner. I watched Brian and Charles on Prime.