I despise this movie
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ansbro-2 — 17 years ago(May 28, 2008 01:25 AM)
Seeing the movie helps you understand why Chaplin was stuck in the silent era.
He wasn't expressive.
He was a nut case.
I like Downey, but all the acting in this movie was very wooden.
That has to be the directors fault.
I liked "A Bridge Too Far", but Richard Attenborough is exhausted.
He looked like they dug him up to do this movie. -
kronos251 — 17 years ago(February 20, 2009 06:54 AM)
ansbro-2, you don't friggin know the real meaning of a nutcase.
Charlie Chaplin was FAR, FAR from being a nutcase.
Man, read his autobiography, or watch this film again and try to understand.
Going through such transitional periods the turn of 20th Century, living below poverty line in England, sordid family disputes and personal/romantic misunderstanding despite vast financial successes demands a sound mind, or better yet, a tremendous sense of humor. Chaplin had both. If he didn't, then he'd end up like his mother in an asylum back in merry old England.
After a second viewing, I came to like this movie. Sure, at first I found it depressing, but that's cause I knew very little of Charlie Chaplin, aside from his famous works.
I believe this movie did the man, Chaplin, justice, which he truly deserved. Someone pointed out that his own real-life granddaughter Geraldine, played Hannah Chaplin his mother in the film. I think that little-known fact truly reconfirms that the Chaplin family approved of the accuracy of this movie.
Quoting Chaplin, "Through humor, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant. It also heightens our sense of survival and preserves our sanity."
The man was a genius. And a humble one at that.
Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. -
kronos251 — 12 years ago(April 05, 2013 01:12 PM)
yes, she was his daughter, thanks parisel. It's been quite a while since I wrote that post 4 years ago, lol. I probably misquoted somebody, or did a typo.
"Rommelyou magnificent bastard, I read your book!"
PATTON -
Lady_Kayura — 16 years ago(December 12, 2009 05:41 AM)
Wasn't expressive? Oh ansbro, please go on to youtube and look up the Great Dictator speech. It is one of the best speeches I have ever heard concerning the expression of one's feelings about something. In fact, here:
Please watch it. As a future Social Studies teacher, I plan on showing this each year and get my students talking.
He was avoiding talkies. He just thought that if films were going to have talking than they better have something damn important to say.
A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having. -
geordiebianconeri — 16 years ago(December 25, 2009 07:19 AM)
In contrast, I was not a Chaplin fan before seeing this movie - and as for many people of my generation (30-something), the odd out-of-context, and therefore not particularly funny, clip that was all we usually got to see on TV did not do the man justice.
But this film encouraged me to realise what a genius Chaplin was, explore his work, and I now own many of the films he made. By which criteria, the film is a success
"Wait till they get a load of me!" -
prgwbtd — 20 years ago(July 16, 2005 09:44 PM)
I'm somewhere in the middle on this subject. I enjoy the film because at this time, it's the only one that gives us a glimpse of Charlie as Charlie. However, I don't enjoy it because much of it never happened - at least the way it is portrayed. No, obviously the film was not about his work, but it would have been nice to see a part of that aspect. Chaplin said himself in his autobiography "My life is my work," and he did put that ahead of his personal life. I think some of his personal struggles were hard to place because most of the time they were directly related to his work. His work is what makes Chaplin, Chaplin to us.
What bothered me most was the unlikeness of the actors to their actual counterparts. Robert Downey Jr. was able to pul off Chaplin (somewhat) only when he was in complete makeup. Otherwise he didn't look enough like Chaplin. I found it more distracting than anything else. Finally, if you read Chaplin's autobiography, you know how events in his life really played out. It's like R. A. completely ignored many of these events and re-wrote them to his liking.
I like the premise of showing Chaplin's personal life, but it needed to be balanced with more of his work mentioned or shown, and a little more truth involved. -
r287 — 20 years ago(August 02, 2005 06:18 AM)
Wasn't this film made or with the blessing of like his daughter or something? I think this was anaccurate depiction of the real thing whereas you were hoping it would just be the glory days through rose-tinted glasses.
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rainybklynight — 20 years ago(August 18, 2005 03:37 PM)
I loved this movie. True, Charlie hated people talking about his life, but in the end, did he not write his autobiography, so people would know the whole story, not just the tabloid scandals. He was very misunderstood; he wasn't a pedophile. There could never be a better biographical film on him. It's emotional, insightful, and you can relate. What more can you ask for. IMO, it's waaaay underrated.
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rizdek — 20 years ago(August 30, 2005 06:24 PM)
"aint_been_to_no_music_school"
In direct response to the first poster, I liked the movie Chaplin. Downey JR did a fine job, and since I wasn't a student of Chaplin, I came away with a better sense of who was the person behind his many great movies. -
julmis — 19 years ago(February 15, 2007 05:02 AM)
What's your source on that one?
There's a story about Chaplin meeting Lita when she was a child, and then again when she was 12 during the making of the The Kid, followed by the Gold Rush and the affair, pregnancy and shotgun marriage etc a few years later.
Although Chaplin's behaviour towards her was questionable when she was 15, I haven't read anything to indicate there was continuous grooming going on for years before, not even in Lita Grey's book about her life with Chaplin, if I remember correctly. -
PhantomAngel6121 — 17 years ago(May 07, 2008 01:18 PM)
If Chaplin didn't want people knowing about his personal life then why did he write an auto-biography?
The movie is about Chaplin himself not the films that he made.
And yes it did show him in somewhat of a negative light, but that's the power of film, the ability to manipulate people's opinions through it. And really, how could you possitivly portray some of the more negative aspects of his personalty/life? With all the respect in the world, the man is very controversial. He knew it (and flaunted it as part of his seamingly melodramatic life that he wrote about in his biography) and the film makers of this movie also knew it.
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