A sweeping account of Chaplin's life and character. Each actor seemed perfectly cast for their role, not just Robert Downey Jr, but also Milla Jovovich, Kevin Dunn, Anthony Hopkins & Paul Rhys. Take the choice of Jovovich as Mildred Harris for instance, she only appears for a few scenes but Jovovich was well cast and age appropriate, nothing worse than seeing a 30 something pretending to be a teenager. Trying to reduce Chaplin's life into 2 hours or so of cinema was always going to leave certain characters a little short changed but I don't see how that could really be helped. The opening third of the film focuses on Chaplin's rise from poverty to breaking through into the film business. The rest covers various scandals that Chaplin encounters and the effect they have on him and his popularity. The film I should say is very well acted, it also touches at the end on some of the political controversy in his life and his complex love affairs.
