Dudley Moore and John Gielgud take over New York in Arthur

10/6/13 Arthur, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Song, 1981

Holy movie overload, Batman! By the time I finished watching Arthur, my over-intellectualized brain could not process another movie or review. Apparently, I have not learned that while it may seem like a great idea to watch 5 or 6 or 8 movies in a brief weekend, it really isn't. It's so hard to process everything and write an informative, much less entertaining, review. I also spent way too much time setting up a Twitter account (@tbacker2013) thanks to peer pressure from a friend of mine. I'm not totally sold on the whole idea but I told him I would give it a few weeks. So, after exhausting myself with a new social media outlet, I am now ready to review Arthur.

I distinctly remember when Arthur came out in theaters, mainly because of the song (Christopher Cross was very popular at the time), but the movie didn't really interest me. This is before I entered my snobby, foreign films only phase, so I don't know what the deal was, so thirty-two years later, I finally watched it. I really liked it, there is some great comedy in there from Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli and Sir John Gielgud. Gielgud, as Hobson, is priceless, the acerbic, sarcastic and deadpan delivery alone is worth watching the movie; he received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in a category that had some pretty heavy and serious roles/movies, like Jack Nicholson in Reds, Howard E. Rollins in Ragtime and Ian Holm from Chariots of Fire. He and Liza Minnelli (Linda) are very funny together, she with her New York attitude, and he with his very prim English air. Moore (Arthur) links it altogether as the lovable millionaire drunk. Arthur is expected to marry someone from society, although it must be tough because he is usually three sheets to the wind and spends a lot of time with prostitutes. Arthur, Hobson and Linda have an encounter outside a store and the rest is cinematic history (um, well, just go with it). Minnelli's comedic timing was fabulous; it's not original to say, but I think now that I have seen a few Judy Garland movies and Minnelli in a few different roles, there are so many similarities, and I think they were both under-appreciated for their comedy chops. Anyone can be overly serious and somber, but hitting the mark on a joke or funny line is not easy. I vaguely remember a lot of grief around the song "The Theme from Arthur (the best that you can do)" winning Best Original Song, it's moderately uplifting, but not overly inspiring or all that representative of the movie ("For Your Eyes Only" and "Endless Love" were two of the other nominees). If you haven't seen Arthur, then add it to your list (you can watch it with the older kids, and if you can explain away the prostitute scene, you could maybe watch it with the younger teens in the family, they've heard and seen worse on television). If you have seen it, but it's been a while, get it again.