The Emperor’s New Clothes *** (2015, Russell Brand) – Movie Review

Perhaps atoning for the Andrew Sachs scandal, Russell Brand does a full Michael Moore, taking to the streets, banks, schools and houses, and thoroughly enjoying a 100-minute rant against bankers and Conservatives in this nimble feature documentary directed and written by Michael Winterbottom. The film also includes carefully selected archival footage examining the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and global economic inequality.

Brand and Winterbottom make a pretty water-tight case for the idea that, since Reagan and Thatcher and their continuing free-market ideas on the economy, the rich have been getting even richer and the poor poorer. The are plenty of laughs and light-hearted moments along the way to Brand proposing a manifesto for change. It’s no good voting once every five years, you have to take to the streets and demonstrate and join unions against greedy management, he says.

Armed with Winterbottom’s facts and figures, he take hefty and convincing swipes at the bad guys, naming and shaming names. Brand hasn’t got any warmth or charm, but he has the courage of his convictions, and he is funny. And this is quite an important little film, produced by Brand’s Revolution Films company and backed on release here, ironically, by the French company Studio Canal.

As Brand says at the beginning, there are no new ideas here. but, as presented here, they’re still very thought provoking in a timely release to get people thinking just before the UK general election.

The film is further proof of what an extraordinary, controversial figure Brand is.

On the one hand, on June 2014 Brand took part in the People’s Assembly Against Austerity of 50,000 marching from the BBC office to Westminster. Brand addressed the crowd: ‘The people of the House of Commons do not represent us, they represent their friends in big business. It’s time for us to take back our power. Power isn’t there, it is here, within us. The revolution that’s required isn’t a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have.’

On the other hand, in an episode of Radio 2’s The Russell Brand Show broadcast on 18 October 2008, Brand and fellow Radio 2 DJ Jonathan Ross made a series of phone calls to actor Andrew Sachs that crudely discussed Sachs’s granddaughter. Both presenters were later suspended by the BBC and Brand resigned from his show. The BBC was later fined £150,000 by Britain’s broadcast regulator for airing the calls.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2415

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