Review of Chaplin (1992) by Patrick B — 01 Jul 2009

This is one of those cases where we have an Oscar-worthy performance that elevates a normally decent movie. Robert Downey Jr. is just utterly spectacular and breathtaking in this role. He actually turns a movie with a decent script into a great one. Just to play Chaplin is daunting enough with the pressure to not only get his movie mannerisms down, but his personality outside of film as well. Not only does he get it down, but he just knocks it out of the ballpark. He becomes Chaplin! I said earlier that he gives one of his best performances in The Soloist. This one completely tops it! Just to watch him play Chaplin for two hours and 25 minutes is fascinating.

Unfortunately, the movie thought it best to focus a lot on Chaplin's love life. And yeah, he had a lot of wives, but did we really have to know every single one of them? I also failed to see what the purpose of Anthony Hopkins was? He's apparently the publisher of the book Chaplin writes, and every once in awhile we get these scenes of an older Chaplin discussing his novel with Hopkins. Hopkins is great as always here, but I wish they would have done away with his character. The story would have flowed better.

They even could have focused more on Chaplin when he was working on his movies. I don't know if his autobiography provided much insight or interesting details into that part of his life, so maybe it was a wise choice not to focus so much on them. But I felt the movie spent a lot of time on his life outside of movies, and it just seemed like they were missing something.

All in all, my complaints for this movie are minor. I didn't really give them much thought as I watched the movie. I'll admit, I was hooked so much by Robert Downey Jr.'s captivating performance that most flaws seemed unimportant.