dated yet timely?

Rating: Null/10 (21 October 2000)

I've never been a big chaplin fan, not liking overly slap stick type humour all that much, but his first "talkie" has some witty dialogue and the Great Dictator has some very timely messages in it as well. The first scene where we see Hynkel giving his speech reminds me of Mel Brooks type humour, obviously Brooks would have been inspired by this and not vice versa. Much of the dialogue is humourous although it tends to make the Nazis seem more pitiable buffoons than a true danger in most scenes, although the barber being strung up to a lamp post is an example that what Chaplin feared still exists in some ways.