Arthur Newman (2013)

This could have been a good movie, instead it slowly faded away into a hotch-potch of pointless scenarios. Firstly, if you are seriously going to change your identity, to the extent where you buy new passports and papers of a dead person you don't leave your old identity papers in your golf-bag. You also don't carry thousands of dollars around in an old sports bag, maybe you could do if you lived in the Vatican, but in the USA you wouldn't. Then you would not pick up a young girl who is obviously mentally unstable for some unknown reasons and even if you did you would be an absolute fool to let her sleep in your motel room so that she has access to your private papers, money, id's etc. while you sleep like a baby. Thirdly, if you were a golf pro. and had been on TV playing golf with the greats, you would not be looking for a golf job under a different identity while being exactly the same physically . Can you imagine Greg Norman turning up at a Golf Club under the name of Bruce Smith, weeks after the real Greg Norman was pronounced 'missing presumed dead', Don't you think one or two golfers would mention that the new golf pro looks just like Greg Norman and is playing like Greg Norman? ......... so far not so good, then we enter the sex scene sagas, pointless escapades of sex in other peoples houses, I don't know if many watching this movie thought that was worth watching...... I certainly did not..... Sorry, but this movie misses the mark when unfortunately with a good script it could have been half way decent.

Failed golfer Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) is running away from his life. He fakes his own death and drives under false ID Arthur Newman cross-country to start a new golf pro job. He finds a woman struggling on a patio chair at his motel. He takes her to the hospital suffering from a cough medicine overdose. Her ID says Michaela Fitzgerald (Emily Blunt) but she is also faking it with her twin sister's ID. Her name is actually Charlotte. As the two of them get closer, they are pursued by his girlfriend Mina Crawley (Anne Heche) and his estranged son Kevin.The mystery of their pasts is compelling for a little while but at some point, it has to be compelling on its own. Their lives aren't that interesting. The two great leads bring something into these damaged roles but it's barely compelling. I question their reasonableness but their characters are not that reasonable. The less compelling part is the B-story with the girlfriend and son. I somewhat care about the leads but not so much with the supporting characters. It adds up to something just below pass.

****Maybe spoilers ahead - caution****Slow aimless random pointless. It does have some golf swings in it. (My husband says his swing was terrible.)Why did Avery/Newman fake his death? Why not just change jobs and move to Terre Haute? Why did his son and ex-wife dislike him so? Why so many scenes of eating junk food? Hot dogs, french fries, slurping big gulps. Where did they get that Polaroid instant camera and film? She can't comb her own hair? Ewww increasingly lurid sex scenes.I was so busy listening to Brits Emily Blunt and Colin Firth mangle their American accents that I couldn't really get into the film. They switched to deep southern in the old newlyweds' bed. But his precise diction "water pressure is superb" kept tripping him up.Ho hum - not worth the time. Sorry.

In an obvious homage to (if not an outright rip-off of) Arthur Miller's seminal play about facing life in the fast lane of corporate America when a guy is a tortoise, not a hare, Miller's "successful" suicide Willie morphs into a slightly more imaginative "fake" suicide Wallace Avery, who dubs himself Arthur Newman (as in a New Man, get it?) in an attempt to use upwards of $50,000 from his savings account to start a new life. Despite giving himself the first name of a guy married to Marilyn Monroe (Miller), this "fake" Arthur is not a successful author when it comes to writing a fairy tale ending. Instead, he hooks up with an even bigger whacko, Mike (played by Emily Blunt) who is burdened by the urge to impersonate her institutionalized paranoid schizophrenic twin sister, whose condition drove their mom to suicide! Naturally, "Arthur" and "Mike" decide that the best step toward making a happier future for themselves is to stage a series of role-playing home invasions. Is this enough to carry a light comedy? I've seen a lot worse.