"Brian and Charles" Review

I'd like to preface this film by saying that it had an absolutely delightful audience, and a surprisingly large one at that. Go and support local, weirder, smaller projects! In a tiny cottage: Brian (David Earl) is a lonely eccentric inventor working on a variety of odd projects. His latest, however, is built from an old washing machine and various parts he finds on his scavenging runs, and seems to work: a robot who chooses for himself the name "Charles" (Chris Hayward). Together they bond and learn about life and each other, then are forced to confront the looming threat of the darker side of life and human existence...

An utterly delightful little movie, bursting with charm as it tackles the old classic of "robot learning to be human", but through the lense of an utter anorak and the quirks of British humour. Brian is played as an inventor who doesn't make much good stuff, but has his heart in the right place, without being at all cloying or a charicature of mental illness. He's just a delightfully odd, lonely man, who makes an equally odd robot and falls in love with a local girl named Hazel (Louise Brealey, always welcome), whose romance doesn't seem forced or creepy in any way. It's earnest and sweet.
But the star of the show is Charles (co-writer Chris Hayward, wearing a washing machine) who gets so may of the big belly laughs. The true spark of life is having them play him as a growing teenager, complete with a classic teenager exchange which completely fucking killed me.
It's not going to se the world on fire, but it is a solid, sweet caper.