Archie Review: The Many Sides of a Reluctant Hollywood Myth

Cary Grant’s suave charm and movie star magnetism made him a legendary leading man of Hollywood’s golden age. Yet behind Grant’s debonair public persona was a complex man who remained an enigma even to those closest to him. The new Britbox series Archie makes an ambitious attempt to peek behind the curtain and reveal the real Archie Leach – Grant’s birth name – that lies beneath the beloved actor’s iconic image.

Spanning Grant’s traumatic boyhood, vaudeville beginnings, rise to fame and turbulent personal life, Archie employs a nonlinear structure to contrast the hardship faced by young Archie with the glamorous existence of movie star Cary Grant. Anchoring this peek into Grant’s private world is Jason Isaacs’ thoughtful portrayal of the matinee idol in his later years. Isaacs skillfully balances Cary Grant’s trademark wit and sophistication with glimpses of Archie’s lingering insecurities, hinting at lifelong scars from family trauma.

While Isaacs’ strong central performance and a few insightful scenes explore this duality effectively, Archie falls short of fully capturing the essence of this cinematic legend. Sidelined by superficial impressions of Grant’s celebrity circle and a narrow focus on his romance with Dyan Cannon, the show often lacks both narrative depth and filmmaking panache. Yet despite its flaws, Archie makes a worthy attempt to unwrap the enigma that was Cary Grant and introduce us to the troubled Archie who lurked just out of sight behind that magical movie star smile.

The Man Behind the Myth: Isaacs Captures Grant’s Complex Duality

As Archie shows, the suave, debonair Cary Grant known to moviegoers was largely a fictional creation – an idealized shell hiding a far more troubled soul within. This concept of duality between Grant’s public and private selves forms the central dramatic question posed by Archie: who was the real man behind the Hollywood myth?

Anchoring this exploration into Grant’s complex psyche is Jason Isaacs’ subtly masterful performance. With his dapper charm and leading man looks, Isaacs bears an uncanny resemblance to the silver screen icon. Yet beyond expertly mimicking Grant’s distinctive voice and mannerisms, Isaacs taps into a deeper vulnerability and insecurity lurking under the star’s glib exterior.

We see flashes of this inner turmoil amidst Grant’s Hollywood high life as Isaacs hints at residual pain from the actor’s miserable Bristol boyhood. Scenes between Archie and his callous father, brought to life by Henry Lloyd-Hughes’ spiteful performance, make clear the deep psychic wounds inflicted by Grant’s traumatic upbringing.

Isaacs channels decades of lingering hurt into nuanced expressions of self-doubt and even self-loathing lurking just behind Grant’s confident movie star smile. This emotional dichotomy culminates late in life when a drained, world-weary Grant admits that his debonair screen persona “Cary Grant” was a fictional front crafted as psychological protection against further hurt.

Isaacs thus compellingly inhabits the full spectrum between the hapless, unloved Archie Leach and the urbane, beloved Cary Grant that the young Bristol boy created as a coping defense. While Archie too often relies on shallow celebrity stunt-casting in supporting roles, Isaacs’ insightful work remains the show’s single greatest success in exposing the man behind Grant’s carefully constructed myth.

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Silver Screen Legacy Overshadowed

For an icon whose lasting fame rests predominantly on his film roles, Archie pays surprisingly little attention to recreating Cary Grant’s cinematic legacy. While scenes staged on the sets of classics like North by Northwest and Charade offer pleasant flashes of nostalgia, the show overlooks a shockingly large portion of Grant’s filmography.

We get no glimpse into touchstone films like The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday or virtually any of the romantic comedies starring Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne or other frequent Grant leading ladies. This omission of movies central to Grant’s fame gives the impression his storied acting career was a mere footnote rather than the driving force in his public image.

When Archie does depict Grant on set, the clunky mimickry of Alfred Hitchcock and Randolph Scott falls flat compared to Isaacs’ nuanced take on Grant himself. The cinematography also fails to capture the visual panache of Grant’s best films, relying more on era-appropriate styling than evocative camerawork.

While likely hampered by budgetary constraints, Archie’s hit-or-miss, surface level treatment of Grant’s movie career seems a missed opportunity to showcase the most universally beloved aspect of this screen legend.

Two Hollywood Lives Entwined

While largely glossing over his professional ascent, Archie instead focuses intently on one narrow slice of Grant’s personal history – his ill-fated fourth marriage to actress Dyan Cannon. By devoting nearly half its runtime to exploring this troubled May-December romance, the show makes the case that Grant’s connection with Cannon and their daughter Jennifer was the most profound relationship of his life.

It’s easy to see why – Cannon is winningly portrayed by Laura Aikman, who captures the rising star’s spunky charm and wide-eyed admiration for Grant before maturing into a fiercely determined mother as cracks form in their union. The show argues convincingly that Cannon and Jennifer were the only people to truly pierce through Grant’s suave façade and touch his deeper insecurities about abandonment.

Yet the constant hopscotching across their rocky marital timeline grows tiresome over four long hours centered heavily on what is just one chapter of Grant’s decades-long career. However insightful into Grant’s lifelong struggles with trust and intimacy, Archie’s intense focus on a single failed marriage frustratingly neglects far more fundamental pieces of who Cary Grant was.

While Aikman’s warm presence provides Archie its most engaging human relationship, the Cannon romance alone cannot encapsulate the lasting essence of this Hollywood legend.

Supporting Stars Fail to Dazzle

While Jason Isaacs compellingly anchors Archie as Cary Grant, the show’s supporting cast generally proves less successful in bringing iconic figures of Hollywood’s golden age to life. The parade of stunt cameo appearances ranges from subtle to silly, lacking the attention to depth and authenticity that distinguishes Isaacs’ lead turn.

The subtler end of the spectrum features reliable talents like Harriet Walter as Grant’s heartbreakingly unstable mother and Henry Lloyd-Hughes as his cruelly indifferent father. Walter movingly channels decades of complex maternal damage, lending one of Archie’s few truly poignant backstories.

Less effective are clownish caricatures of Alfred Hitchcock, Mae West, and other luminaries of Grant’s era played more for distraction than insight. Particularly cringeworthy is Christian Lees’ scene-stealing hack job as George Burns, inserts of which feel strangely obligatory given the minuscule relevance to Grant’s journey. Such haphazard celebrity stunt-casting serves little purpose beyond superficial nostalgia.

Exacerbating the credibility gap is the generally stagey, underbudgeted aesthetic of scenes set in old Hollywood. Supporting players often feel stranded in static medium shots or odd angles that fail to capture cinematic scope. While Isaacs transcends these limitations through sheer talent and commitment, the rest of the cast lacks enough directorial energy or purposeful writing to pop as intended.

Rather than enhancing the view into Grant’s world, the shoehorned supporting turns in Archie tend to underscore how rarely we glimpse the man at the story’s center in meaningful relation to those around him.

Stylish Backdrop, TV Budget Constraints

One area where Archie consistently impresses is in its period-perfect production design and costuming. Within its budgetary limits, the show nails mid-century aesthetics, from the madcap energy of 1920s vaudeville to the sleekly tailored menswear filling Grant’s 1960s screen wardrobe.

The set decoration team clearly took great care researching iconic backdrops like the North by Northwest crop duster scene, recreating every mid-century prop and furniture piece with meticulous detail. Coupled with gorgeous costumes echoing Grant’s legendary onscreen style, these handsome visuals externally reflect Archie’s ambitions of Hollywood scale.

What hampers this vision is the distractingly cheap, flatly lit cinematography flattening so many sequences. Rather than embracing Grant’s cinematic legacy with stylistic panache, director Paul Andrew Williams adopts a blandly conventional TV look mismatched with the show’s glamorous backdrop.

When the camera isn’t static, handheld shots meant to evoke a behind-the-scenes intimacy more often feel simply unsteady. And visual transitions ranging from grainy 8mm home movie effects to psychedelic montages come off arbitrarily gimmicky rather than artfully stylistic.

While Archie’s design teams nail the opulent surfaces of Grant’s world, the show’s visual soul too rarely transcends its television budget to fully realize that golden age grandeur. As with peering behind Grant’s suave façade to find a humbler Archie Leach, the further we probe beneath this glossy exterior, the more Archie’s TV-level production values show through.

The Enigma Endures

In aiming to unveil the elusive man behind the Hollywood myth, Archie makes a valiant attempt to demystify an icon who worked so hard to shield his true self. This tension lies at the heart of why Cary Grant remains such an object of endless fascination decades after his film career ended. We instinctively long to solve the mystery, to comprehend the ordinary Archie Leach who somehow transformed himself into the epitome of extraordinary movie star glamour and charm.

Isaacs’ performance provides telling glimpses into the real Cary Grant behind the persona, hints reinforced by a poignant backstory explaining the painful roots of Grant’s insecurities and trust issues. Yet despite such sporadic insights, by the end credits Grant remains as tantalizingly enigmatic as ever – an intoxicating celluloid phantom who continues to hold something back even from his fictionalized self.

Could a deeper dive into Grant’s creative process, more scenes conveying his unique comic timing and charisma with fellow cinema giants have helped capture his artistic essence? Certainly. Would grander Hollywood set pieces and crisper cinematography better reflected Grant’s visual legacy? No doubt. But perhaps Grant himself is ultimately beyond demystification, no matter how close we temporarily draw to his veiled inner reality.

For while Isaacs nails the voice and the mannerisms, much as Grant himself once confessed: “Nobody ever created a personality on the screen. All you can do is hope the cameras will photograph yours.” Those hoping Archie would fully unravel this legend may leave disappointed. Yet its inability to conclusively pin down Grant’s magical, indefinable magnetism serves as confirmation that the Cary Grant persona was no mere performance at all.