I love the work of the magnificent Charlie Chaplin. His slapstick action will always be remembered and it has gone on to inspire countless imitators. “Chaplin” sadly doesn’t focus a lot of its time on his movies but more on his personal life and political views. Now, I don’t mind seeing a bit of that but I want more info on his movies. In this film Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr. “Iron Man”) says ‘if you want to understand m, watch my movies’ and that is accurate.

“Chaplin” quickly goes over parts of Charlie Chaplin’s life as it spends several minutes at a time on his love life and several minutes at a time on whether his a communist or not and then a few moments on something like his movie “The Gold Rush” and even less on his film “Modern Times”. It also flies past things such as his childhood.

I didn’t actually think Downey Jr. was that great in this film I must say. I don’t know why but I just didn’t. Danny Aykroyd (“Ghostbusters”) is average as the filmmaker. Anthony Hopkins (“Silence of the Lambs”) is actually good in this film. Kevin Kline (“Ice Storm”) was good too. Penelope Ann Miller (“The Artist”), Milla Jovovich (“Resident Evil”) and the rest of the women in this film are all used simply for sex objects and that shows how weak the film is at times.

This film has plenty of shameful moments; I hated the pathetic attempt of recreating Chaplin’s slapstick chasing but in a real-life situation and not when he was in front of the camera because it felt cheesy. Most of the film is very bland. If “Chaplin” focused more on how they made such classics as “The Great Dictator”, “The Kid” and others this film would have been great but sadly the highlight of the film is seeing footage of the real Charlie Chaplin in his films.