Starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, and Jennifer Garner. Rated PG.

Some people are being crybabies about the sacrilegious remaking of Arthur, the 1981 comedy about the cuddly, drunken Manhattan playboy. Are that film’s stars, Dudley Moore and John Gielgud, getting their knickers knotted over this? Well, no, because they’re dead. But forget about Hollywood’s relentless self-cannibalizing and focus on this Arthur for itself. Oh, and on whether you have a raging hate-on or love-on for obscene, hyperactive Russell Brand.

As with his debauched rock god Aldous Snow in Get Him to the Greek, the slyly mad Brand essentially seems to be playing himself here: a simpleton-savant rocker dandy.

Arthur spends his days plastered, being ferried around by his driver, Bitterman (Luis Guzmán), and accompanied by his acerbic yet doting nanny, Hobson (Helen Mirren). When his mother (Geraldine James) insists he make a power marriage with her prize executive, Susan (Jennifer Garner), or forfeit his inheritance, Arthur inconveniently falls for kooky tour guide Naomi (Greta Gerwig).

Some jokes die, and you wish the perfectly deadpan Mirren had sharper lines (although calling Arthur’s life “a safari into the pointless” is nice). That line also possibly applies to the plot.

But there’s playful, unhinged chemistry between Brand and basically everybody, especially Garner as the amusingly unlikable Susan—except indie-actor Gerwig and Brand have zero spark. Thus, “love” is unlikely to conquer a monster inheritance, is it? Also, Naomi is so underwritten, you’re mostly pondering why she’s wearing those baby-doll dresses, like a toddler Annie Hall. Plus, with director Jason Winer and writer Peter Baynham tiptoeing around the un-PC anachronism of a lovable drunk, you wish they’d said ”˜Fuck It!’ and made a totally degenerate Get Arthur to the Greek—with Helen Mirren.