Chaplin Details

This epic about the early part of Charlie Chaplin's life from co-producer/director Richard Attenborough is, for the most part, extremely entertaining and intelligent, with Oscar-nominated Robert Downey Jr superb in a role that was reportedly coveted by Dustin Hoffman, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams. The opening sequences are genuinely affecting, with Geraldine Chaplin playing Chaplin's mother (and her own grandmother), a music-hall singer who ended her days in an asylum. Yet, overall, the depiction of a growing Hollywood is too rose-tinted and the true tragic tale of a misunderstood comic genius is reduced to a series of star-studded vignettes. The story also suffers from its diffuseness and it's not helped by the device of having the older Chaplin dictate his tale to a diffident (and utterly fictitious) publisher, played by Anthony Hopkins. It's clearly the result of too many cooks, with William Boyd, Bryan Forbes and William Goldman among the writers who dipped into Chaplin's own autobiography and David Robinson's seminal biography for inspiration. And, however good Downey Jr is, you can't help feeling that Johnny Depp might have brought more pathos to the part, especially after seeing Depp re-create the famous bread-roll dance from The Gold Rush in Benny and Joon. Still, this remains a noble attempt to tell the story of the comic genius.

Somewhat stolid biopic that tries to cram in too much of a long life, but which has a fascinating story to tell and often tells it well; it might have been better had it been longer.