Director: Richard Attenborough
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Geraldine Chaplin, Kevin Dunn
Have I Seen It Before: There was a stretch there in the early 2000s where I likely ran my VHS copy into sputtering dust from repeated viewings. But then, I’ll admit, I was sort of a strange kid. While I surely tried to keep the man Chaplin in my head when I was writing both The Devil Lives in Beverly Hills and parts of The Once and Future Orson Welles, but it would be hard to deny that a bit of this movie didn’t leak in there around the edges.
Did I Like It: But that may be the central problem with the film. I still enjoy it, but I do wonder if the whole experience rang hollow for many (and I can see now how it might be that way for some) because Chaplin himself is an unknowable figure, and therefore maybe not the best subject for a biopic. His contemporaries didn’t really know him. Attenborough and the screenwriters never really attained the level of understand for which they may have strived, hence the soft dramatic structure* of the film being a conversation between Chaplin (Downey) and the editor of his autobiography (Anthony Hopkins, never quite looking like he is doing anything other than doing Attenborough a favor). Even Chaplin himself never seemed to really know himself, as the filmmakers can’t help but note that his autobiography** is a prolonged attempt to dodge connection with the reader. Even Downey only seems to understand the man in fits and starts, although even that might be a bit of subterfuge hidden behind the confidence and craft on display.
That’s what we’re left with, unfortunately. A hagiographic survey which tries to re-create decades old comedy, but done well with Downey’s skill so it isn’t an embarrassing display of mimicry. That, and a John Barry score which sounds like it was taken from rejected tracks for a Bond score.
*And to have a dramatic structure at all does put it above the larger pack of biopics. I’m looking in your direction, Napoleon (2023).