Imagine “Identity Thief” with the implausibility doubled and the laughs removed, and you’ll have “Arthur Newman,” one of those many indies that exist to give actors a chance to go slumming.
Colin Firth, who plays the part like he’s suffering from mild rigor mortis, is a boring FedEx employee named Wallace Avery who decides to fake his own suicide and begin a new life as a golf pro named Arthur Newman. Naturally, at a motel, a beautiful woman (Emily Blunt) passes out from a cough-syrup overdose and 30 seconds after he meets her, she’s in his arms.
Oh, and she decides to join him for a road trip from Florida to Indiana, where he hopes to get his golf job. Aaaaaand she’s also traveling under a false name. So they break into a series of people’s houses and have sex in them while posing as their inhabitants.
The flood of contrivance drowns any drama. But even if you could suspend disbelief at the raging phoniness of everything in the movie, from Firth’s fuzzy American accent to the likelihood that a young hottie would hit the road with an aging dullard, just because two people are miserable doesn’t mean they’re interesting.