Russell Brand is one of those comedians you either love or hate. And it seems people pay just as much attention to the sordid details of his private life as to his work – in the films he appears in (Get Him to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) or lends his instantly identifiable whiny voice to (Hop, Despicable Me). In Arthur he has big shoes to fill – he takes over Dudley Moore’s role in a remake of a flimsy but likeable comedy still fondly remembered thirty years after it stormed the box office.

If you’ve seen the original, the plot requires no further explanation the second time around. But it has been a while, so let me refresh your memory. Thirtysomething man-child Arthur Bach is what we all wish we were: a multi-millionaire free of all responsibilities. His every whim is catered to by two faithful servants: his stern and surly nanny Hobson (Helen Mirren taking over from John Gielgud – although I doubt the Oscar he won in the role is part of the package), and his rotund, clueless chauffeur Bitterman (veteran character actor Luis Guzman; Boogie Nights).

Between the extravagant shopping sprees and increasingly rare periods of sobriety, life in the Big Apple is sweet, simple and forgiving for Arthur. He even manages to fall in love with flaky tour guide Naomi (the charming Greta Gerwig, still playing the awkward ingénue after Greenberg). But then his mother (who behaves more like his business partner) delivers a dreaded ultimatum – he must marry rich and unpleasant socialite Susan (Jennifer Garner; Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) or be cut off from his inheritance. The ensuing romantic comedy of errors springs from Arthur’s misguided attempts to navigate the situation as, like any grown man, he really wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Although it’s about a quarter of an hour longer, Arthur is surprisingly faithful to the original and brings little of its own to the table. Fortunately, it retains the reckless alcoholism of its title character (watered down a little in the remake, but still very un-PC), although it makes the working-class girlfriend a more unassuming and innocuous character than Liza Minnelli’s waitress/hustler in the original. The most notable change is the casting of a woman in the role of Hobson, reuniting the versatile Mirren with The Tempest costar Brand. Her upper lip may not be quite as stiff as Gielgud’s, but the contrast adds an extra dimension to the sexual tension that runs through the film. A gruff, growling Nick Nolte, as Susan’s intimidating father, unfortunately has little to do, and would probably have been better off conserving his energy for a role in something more worthy of his talents.

The warm, playful tone of the original survives here, but for a film with a PG rating, the amount of racy dialogue and irresponsible behaviour on display is hardly appropriate for younger audiences. It comes as no surprise that the endless stream of sexual innuendoes and toilet humour in the new screenplay, not to mention the drunken buffoonery and dangerous mischief, is the product of one of the screenwriters of Borat and Bruno – films which groped at the boundaries of good taste in puerile comedy and relished the controversy they succeeded in arousing. So keep impressionable young viewers away – remaining a child himself well into his second decade as an adult, Arthur barely gives a second thought to the vices that freeze him in a hedonistic adolescent wonderland of booze, babes and giant bathtubs. Sounds to me like the role Russell Brand was born to play.