You have to love the British.
Who else in our sad day and age could still make a lovely little film like this: a sweet buddy comedy about loneliness; a study of an unlikely friendship; with a gentle little romance thrown in along with plenty of bittersweet moments.
Brian lives a very lonely little life: in an attempt to deal with that, he’s created all sorts of strange little inventions, most of them to deal with some minor problem in his life.
But it really doesn’t matter just how minor the problems are: he is creating for the joy of creating.
However, this time he plans to make something bigger than anything else he’s ever attempted:
A robot.
He has an old washing machine for its body, and an old mannequin head to put on top. Brian tries to decide on a name for his creation, and the robot decides that it likes the name “Charles.”
Charles is intensely curious and quickly develops a likeable, gentle persona. But he isn’t content staying in Brian’s house and wants to see more of the world.
Brian, however, is more worried about how the people in the village will see Charles, particularly his bully of a next door neighbor, Eddie.
Meanwhile, another neighbor, Hazel, accidentally learns of Charles’ existence, and joins the two on their various adventures, growing closer to Brian along the way…
David Earl has been playing Brian off and on for many years in a number of different TV series and movies, generally as one character in a larger ensemble cast or in sketch comedies. He also worked with Chris Hayward (not, I’ll note, the legendary creator of Dudley Do-Right) on quite a few other projects . Chris is primarily a writer, although this time around he also provides Charles’ voice.
Charles’ design is a real stand-out: he has a huge and rather blocky shape, which looks slightly hunchbacked from a distance. He usually wears very routine and slightly old-fashioned sorts of clothes: a tweedy brown jacket, a white dress shirt and a faded red bowtie. These match his head which may have that classic perfect mannequin profile, but with glasses and a fringe of grey hair around his bald pate added. He looks like an eccentric old uncle and his face seems to have a perpetually curious and mildly perplexed expression all the time, even though only his eyes actually move in his face.
The movie does not spend too much time on the origin of Charles, beyond a few shots of Brian working to create him. We do learn that Charles’ intense curiosity leads him to learn everything he can from Brian’s encyclopedia set and whatever else he can lay his hands on.
Perhaps the most curious aspect of the film is that it is structured like a documentary: Brian explains what he is doing to the camera, and he adds a few bits of narration here and there throughout the film. But so many events in the story take place as if they aren’t there. Someone does comment on the film crew late in the movie, but no one else ever seems to notice them.
Nor does Eddie the bully seem too worried about getting filmed.
This was one of those many projects which came into existence because of the lockdowns, as it was set in a fairly remote place and had a rather limited cast. Now I’ll point out that this is not the sharply satiric and witty sort of comedy we’ve come to expect from so many British comedies, but something older and gentler yet still very British.
It seems to me to be part of a dying breed, as we do not see too many sweet little comedies like this anymore — or, for that matter, too many romances where circumstances draw two people closer together and they form a strong, romantic bond without the need for any sex scenes along the way.
Remember when there used to be movies like that?
In the end, well, let’s say that Brian’s inventions save the day and everyone but Eddie gets a happy ending. What happens to Charles seems particularly unexpected, and yet perfect — and a sign that perhaps Brian has made some real progress himself.
Or, to sum it up, it’s a lovely film. Go watch it.
And you never know what you can do with an old washing machine…
rivets on the poster 