Chaplin's Only Good Talkie

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2011)

Not a great movie, nor of great historical importance, and obsolescent even as it was bring made (Hitler's full menace would not be realized until later), but still entertaining.
The scenes with the silent comedy are still topnotch, such as the scenes where Hynkel plays with a globe like a medicine ball, the train having trouble stopping at the platform, and the beginning scene during World War One. But the movie isn't meant to be pure comedy; the stormtroopers are genuinely scary, and so is Hynkel even for the small conquests he made during that era. Even though there are contrived elements, such as the Jewish barber being hospitalized without contact with the world for twenty years and still having has barbershop available to him, and his being able to impersonate Hykel, even getting the right uniform, but the movie's message is still effective.
Unfortunately Chaplin would find that his talkies would be nowhere near as good as his silents.