Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

So much average

Best movie of this year hands down!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's notable that the best bits of this are when they play excerpts from the classics as a preamble to the "We're Sorry" episode at the Oscars in 1972. It's only then do you sense the genius of the man which rarely comes across from the episodic excerpts that form the rest of the film. Downey is good enough and the rest of the cast do their stuff but it never captures anything but a ghost of the real man for the meat and potatoes are inside the pants and the heart of the tramp. The synthesis of ballet dancer, acrobat and comedian that endear us to the tramp barely comes across although you get a sense of his driven and obsessive nature as he strove to improve on the art form that had defined him. It's become fashionable to deride the sentimentality and pathos of his later films and to elevate others, notably Keaton, above him. But the bedrock of his genius lies in the 100 or so one and two-reelers that innovated and developed the history of cinema and the classic features of his maturity. The film doesn't ever come close to capturing that.

Before seeing this movie i didn't know much about Charlie Chaplin. I knew that he is a famous actor in silent film, and in particular in comedy,I knew that he always wore a black top hat and long black jacket, and that he was born in England. After viewing the movie I learn that his life wasn't good,I mean his childhood was sad and unhappy, but he was always smiling and happy. The thing that struck me the most is that he had the best timing in film, but the worse timing in life. he liked younger girls and often they weren't really good people. He married different girls but only the last one, Oona O'Neill, took care of him for a long time. I really liked this film because I've learned a lot of things about Chaplin and I really appreciate it.

I won't review the movie itself, as many people have done so and I do believe Robert Downey's performance as Charlot was very good as well as some of his support actors.I want to talk about the old Charles Chaplin's make-up. One thing that Hollywood can't get right yet is that of aging an actor. No matter how many make up techniques they use, how much experience make-up artists have, aging an actor is a real feat for them. Why can't they just find a look-alike actor around the same age of the character instead of making one look like a fake human?In this case, when Charlie is at his Switzerland house being interviewed by Hopkin's character, his face instead of looking 'aged' looks more like as if he's had a fire accident and his features are the result of a bad burning and a myriad of surgeries where he lost most of his hair and his eyebrows.To make matters worse, when he's waiting on his wheelchair awaiting for his academy award, his face looks like it is the result of a real bad face transplant, the shape of his eyes look weird, his lips look very stiff and badly shaped and his skin looks very waxy and and like it's melting with the lights. To be honest it reminded me a lot the face of the Phantom of the Opera of 1925. It's almost unbearable to watch and spoils the film's great performances.Now, for some reason, when Robert Downey Jr. had this make up on, his performance was very wrong (besides being a 20-ish years old playing a non believable 60-something years old man), a thumbs down for the great Richard Attenborough. But when you watch footage of interviews of Chaplin at this age (60s), he was really such a sweetheart, very kind, still funny and very smiley. Downey's Old Chaplin looks sad, dark, depressed, boring, dry, uninteresting, and of course he looks like anybody else but not like the great Charles Chaplin when old.

Charlie Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr.) is recalling memories for his autobiography writer George Hayden (Anthony Hopkins). As a child in England, Chaplin witnesses his mother Hannah Chaplin (Geraldine Chaplin) chased off the stage by a crowd and he immediately takes over to be a big hit. The cops take him and his brother Syd (Paul Rhys) for the workhouse. His mother goes mad and he puts her in the sanitarium. He gets hired by music hall producer Fred Karno (John Thaw). He falls for fellow performer Hetty Kelly (Moira Kelly). Producer Mack Sennett (Dan Aykroyd) hires him for the new flickers. Hetty gets married and Charlie meets secretary Edna Purviance (Penelope Ann Miller) who he turns into his actress. He befriends Douglas Fairbanks (Kevin Kline) and marries 16 year old child actress Mildred Harris (Milla Jovovich) after she lies about being pregnant. He angers J. Edgar Hoover (Kevin Dunn) before he becomes the head of the FBI. He divorces Mildred and marries Lita Grey whom he hates. Then he marries Paulette Levy (Diane Lane) whom he loves. Joan Barry (Nancy Travis) has boobs and sues him falsely successfully for paternity. He marries Oona O'Neill (Moira Kelly again). He is accused of being a communist.Richard Attenborough is trying to stuff so much of a big life into one movie. Sometimes things feel skipped over or given a limited treatment. Characters come in and out like a rotating door. The production value is sufficiently high but there isn't enough time to get it all in. The real story is understandably simplified and Attenborough tries to give it a surreal connected treatment... sometimes. There is no doubt that Robert Downey Jr. does an excellent job especially with the physical comedy. His performance is better than the film as a whole.