Brian & Charles (2022 | USA | 90 minutes | Jim Archer)
Each year at the Sundance Film Festival, there is a subset of feature films that come from an original short. The prevailing logic of these works seems to be that, since the shorts were good, they should be made longer and more expansive. There have been some good examples of this in action. Films like 2013’s Whiplash or the recent Emergency have realized the potential of building upon a theme or idea of a short in a manner that continues to serve the story.
Then there is Brian & Charles, an overstretched and unnecessary expansion of a wonderful short that should have been left alone. Instead, what was a tight twelve-minute tale is put on the cinematic equivalent of a torture rack where it is stretched to the point that it completely shatters. While there are moments of levity that do their best to peek through, it is not enough to carry the increasingly repetitive narrative that far overstays its welcome.
The film tells the story of a lonely inventor named Brian. Played by a dedicated David Earl who does his darndest to keep it all moving, we see the way isolation has shaped the life of the crafty man. Often shot and staged in a mockumentary form, we learn how Brian spends his days building contraptions that mostly don’t work. He still keeps up his spirits, pushing onward to his next project with an awkward yet amiable disposition. Where the story really begins is when his most ambitious creation yet, an artificially intelligent robot named Charles, actually works. Made out of random materials he’s joined together, the robot comes alive and soon begins to form a close bond with his creator that will change Brian’s life forever.
For us as viewers, this film is far short of life-changing. It feels harsh to criticize a film like Brian & Charles as it is clearly a labor of love that everyone put their heart into. Even though you may want to love the film as much as those who made it, you just can’t shake the feeling that it is all going nowhere. It is shocking just how quickly it all begins to wear thin and tiresome to the point of frustration, leaving you wondering what was the actual reason behind expanding it. What worked as a short just doesn’t translate to feature-length as every conflict and new narrative development feels tacked on. This only ends up smothering the sublime simplicity of the original work, leaving little reason to spend an hour and a half with it when you can already see this story done perfectly in a fraction of the time.
There are certainly some clever bits to be had here and there, namely when we see the duo just puttering about. It feels like the creativity that is born out of the confines of the home ensures that the writing has to be sharper and the story more focused. When we get out into the world too much, it all becomes forced to the point of being annoying. Often, as if to try to push through these rough patches, rather sappy and on-the-nose music will swell. This plays like an attempt to hammer home what could generously be described as the film’s heart. In execution, it is just yet another way that its overly sentimental narrative becomes complete and utter hogwash.
It is hard to think of a film out of Sundance in recent memory that more comprehensively misunderstood what was so delightful about its origins. The fleeting nature of the short was what made it work so well. You were left with a sense of sweetness that was just sprinkled over the surface. That more than sufficed for what the story could be. In making it more than seven times as long, it set itself up for failure by requiring more and more plot that really just feels like window dressing. As a result, the story is stripped of any sense of subtlety in order to just pile on more and more for no real reason.
Short films are often dismissed and downplayed, though there is something to be said in a story packing a real punch without feeling the need to be a full feature. The quality of a film will always be more important than its quantity, something that this misguided work unintentionally demonstrates perfectly. By the time Brian & Charles reaches a conclusion that features a whole heaping of spectacle from a big fire to a car chase, you’ll find yourself wondering how this intimate and quirky character study flew so off the rails. If you even get that far, then you should go back to the short where it all began to see the story done right.
You can see Brian & Charles in theaters starting June 16.