Hey, do you want to see a movie that complelty takes the magic out of one of the greatest directors in the history of film, along with Hollywood and filmmaking itself? Then I have a movie for you!
There are so many problems with this film I don't where to begin, but I guess I should start with the obvious. Frankly, Robert Downey Jr. just plain sucks as Charlie Chaplin. He doesn't look that much like him, doesn't sound like him, and is a pale imitator of a great artist. I kept thinking that an actor like Robert De Niro (even though he looks less like Chaplin than Downey) would have been better for the part- I think that only a master thespian could have played the star. Attenborough makes a major mistake when he uses clips from actual Chaplin movies in the film- it highlights the massive difference.
In his defence, Downey is given a really awful screenplay to work with. Co-written by three writers, (one of them the very talented William Goldman), the script is a mess. It's as if they sole source the writers used was an encyclopedia article on Chaplin. The script insists on portrying Chaplin as being miserable, but never explains why. This made even more strange by the fact it gives him an apparent pass on his relationships with teenage girls. It treats these relationships as a life problem for Chaplin, but never a fault. Weird. On top of all of these problems is the moronic choice to set up virtually everythign that happens in his life with cheesy. For example, in one of the many uneccessary scenes in the film, Chaplin takes his sons to the beach and plays with a beach ball, which later becomes the inspiration for The Great Dictator. In another he plays with some breadsticks on forks out of bordom, and...well you get the idea.
The screenplay's fault could have been overcome by strong direction, but that's something that Sir Richard Attenborough appears unable to provide. He uses cliche's like irisis to present the days of silent film, makes the characters have zero depth to them and causes a lot of confusion as to when events take place and in what order. And, as stated above, he blew it when he cast Downey as Chaplin.
Finnaly, Downey's makeup job is horrible. In his elderly years, he looks like some alien in a Michael Jackson video, not Charlie Chaplin.
To be fair to the film, a few things work. All of the actors except Downey are good (Dan Ackroyd as Mack Sennet particularly stands out), and the movie does have some technically impressive cinemtography. But nothing here comes close to explaining anything about the man. The worst part about the whole film is that it seems to destroy the magic of Hollywood and Chaplin's films. At one point in the movie, Chaplin says "If you want to know me, watch my movies." That may or may not be true, but I am sure you'd sure have a lot more fun watching those films than watching this cinematic disaster.
Chaplin (1992)