Arthur disaster: Times subscribers get free show

As if the chance to read the Times and Sunday Times were not enough of a thrill to merit the £8.66 monthly subscription to get behind Rupert Murdoch's paywall, subscribers have just been sent details of a very special offer.  

On April 19, three days before it officially opens, they can attend, for free, a special preview screening of Arthur, the remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore comedy starring Russell Brand.

This is the film in which, as the Times puts it, "one loveable rogue [Brand] steps seamlessly into the shoes of another loveable rogue [Moore], as Russell Brand adds his unique touch to the title role of Arthur".

Er, yes, except there's a problem...

If the good people who look after subscribers' treats at Wapping had looked at virtually any other newspaper or website in the past week, they would have seen that Arthur has been ridiculed as the most unfunny film to come of America in a long time.

Furthermore, its "loveable rogue" star Brand is considered so bad in it that:
(a) some are wondering if he will ever work in Hollywood again and (b) his wife Katy Perry had to fly across the Atlantic to be by his side, so cruel were some of the reviews.

As The First Post pointed out last week, the US critics have described Brand as a "half-cocked egomaniac", "whiny" and a "bore". Most damning was Marshall Fine in the Huffington Post: "If anything, this movie should put a nail in the coffin of Russell Brand's career as a movie comic because, well, the guy's just not that funny."

Ouch. Perhaps there will be more takers for the other treat currently on offer to the behind-the-Wapping-paywall crowd - a four-day cooking holiday in northern Libya at a saving of £450 off the normal price. Just kidding - it's in Tuscany. ·