Review of Chaplin (1992) by Eddie K — 18 Jun 2011

The film is certainly not a disaster, it's got it's great moments but for some reason this film is completely unappealing to me, which is odd because Attenborough created Gandhi, a film with one of the greatest performances in cinematic history from Ben Kinglsey, and I love just about every actor involved in this.

I do not think that Downey Jr. was right for the role, but I also can't imagine anyone else playing it. Throughout the entire film I felt like I was watching him have a battle with himself, like he was lost and he did not know what to do.

He did not look at ease, like he was nervous during the entire film. Although he did get his personality and his characteristics down pretty well. I also do not think that the film was long enough, and it was not nearly personal enough.

I felt like I was watching a movie about the people around him and not Chaplin. There were only a few moments where I actually cared about the man because I felt so far away from him. It's not all Downey Jr.

's fault, the film was not very well written and at a couple of scenes like the confrontations with his brother, the poor quality of the script really showed through and he could only do the best he could.

The camera work is pretty damn good however. My favorite performance of the film, although I'm biased because I cannot praise this guy enough and he's one of my all time favorites and if there was such a thing I believe he would be the greatest actor of all time.

Anthony Hopkins, in a very minor role completely out acts just about all of them, James Woods and Kevin Kline were also very good in the film. Moira Kelly was also very good and she was the most convincing out of all the actresses in the film.

From what I know from history J. Edgar Hoover was a complete asshole, and Kevin Dunn played a good asshole, a convincing asshole. I went into this film with no expectations, I think that's a best thing a viewer can do because I allowed myself to look at it critically.

I forgot to mention an error, if Sid was Charlies older brother, why did Charlie look like he was 107 when he was in his forties and his brother still looked like a teenager, am I the only one that noticed that? is that really the way they looked? well if they did then I'm wrong but I just found it hard to believe, I understand that some people's hair never goes gray, but his brother did not even show signs of age even on his face, perhaps he was immortal? that really confused me, and then I think I heard at some point that Sid was actually his younger brother, a lot of errors.

I thought the film was nothing more than generic with some pretty good performances, otherwise it was detached and bland.