Brian and Charles

A kooky but delightful dramedy about a lonely Welsh inventor who creates a robot friend for himself, upending his life in unexpected ways.

“Brian and Charles” is about a lonely Welsh inventor who puts together a robot to be his best friend. Never mind that his practical skills seem barely to go beyond fixing a leaky sink, or at that all his other inventions like the flying bicycle have been miserable failures.

The egg belt and the pine cone bag — yes, they’re exactly what they sound like — are his only semi-successes. So how could he create a synesthetic, self-aware form of life?

Brian is played by David Earl, who cowrote the screenplay with Chris Hayward, who plays the robot, Charles. They made a short version of this story a few years ago and have now turned it into a kooky but surprisingly heartwarming feature, also directed by Jim Archer.

You may recognize Earl from his role on the Netflix show “After Life,” where he plays a somewhat unnerving man with stringy hair, beard, beetle glasses and an air of severe social awkwardness, bordering on the spectrum. It’s pretty much the same character here, as Brian lives all alone on a remote farm called Ploxgreen Cottage where he tinkers all day on his gadgets.

Brian seems to know on some level he’s unhappy, but soldiers forth with a sanguine attitude, especially about his inventions. He tries to make something, becomes obsessed with the idea, it usually doesn’t work out and he chucks it for the next thing.

His shelves and corners are positively bursting with the last things.

One day while rooting around in a neighbor’s garbage he comes across a mannequin head and decides to make a robot. Someone to help out around the house, he muses, though it’s clear Brian craves companionship more than anything. So he throws something together, proudly displays it for us and, of course, it won’t turn on.

(The film operates under the conceit a la “The Office” that someone is shooting a documentary about Brian, so the footage is a mix of observation and interviews directed to the camera. Brian himself seems confused why anybody would want to make a movie about him.)

But one day Brian comes home to find Charles suddenly come alive, and is even able to talk in a 1980s-style computerized voice. He’s a jangled-up-looking contraption, very tall with an oversized squarish body (actually a washing machine), tufts of curly gray hair and eyeglasses, except for one missing eye is replaced with a blue light camera. He vaguely resembles Terminator Jim Broadbent.

Forget about plausibility, just go with it.

Their relationship immediately takes off, and Brian’s happiness soars. Charles — who gifts himself a surname, Petrescu — is very smart, having read the dictionary and all of Brian’s other books on the first day, but is childlike in his outlook. Brian treats him like a son at first, enjoying teaching him about the world, but they soon become besties.

Brian is terrified of taking Charles into town and letting anyone see him. Part of this is it might upset the delicate balance of this new — really, his only — relationship. He’s also scared of Eddie (Jamie Michie), the local bully, who has a tendency to appropriate anything he wants.

As Charles gains experience, he grows bored of just hanging around with Brian all day. He wants to meet other people and eventually travel the world, especially Honolulu. Nevermind that robots can’t get passports, and I doubt he’d fit in any airplane seat.

Things grow even sharper when Brian begins a budding romance with Hazel (Louise Brealey), a sweet and shy woman from town. She’s at first intrigued by Charles, but then drawn to the quiet man who created him. The robot starts acting like a petulant teenager, talking back and blasting his music.

“Brian and Charles” works on a strange level you don’t often see in the movies, a mix of whimsy and sadness. It’s very much in the tradition of pastoral British movies about a community filled with quirky people coming together around a common issue, in this case Brian and his robot. It’s a cute flick without that grating tang of “look at me, I’m so cute” movies of this ilk often seem to have.

It’s a funny movie, the sort that milks awkward, uncomfortable moments. But it also finds ways to hit you in the heart you don’t see coming. Brian is a pathetic figure who finds his humanity by building something wondrous, which he then isn’t able to control. Rather than give up, as is his usual M.O., he works to deal with that, too.

It’s like a Monty Python sketch that took a lovely detour into pathos.