Chaplin's most powerful political statement!

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2005)

Charles Chaplin's The Great Dictator is a political statement wrapped in a comedy with a little bit of drama here and there. It is not his best work, but I would definitely recommend it to Chaplin fans. I feel that Charlie Chaplin was at his most powerful in his silent films. Here, he seems a little unsure of himself, in terms of balancing acts that he could pantomime with verbal jokes. Don't get me wrong, there is some hilarious dialog in this movie. It is not short on laughs by any means, but Chaplin's best films had a brilliant sense of balance to them, a balance between drama and comedy that few have ever been able to match. It is a very good movie, but, unfortunately I don't feel it matches up against Chaplin's best, although, I can't think of many films that do! What this film does have going for it, and it has quite a bit going for it, is another brilliant performance from Charles Chaplin. Only this time, aside from his spectacular physical comedy, Chaplin proves he also knows how to deliver his lines with a comedic timing that is every-bit as precise as his pantomime. The highlights are the brilliant dance with the globe and the powerful, moving speech that Chaplin gives at the end of the film. His performance as Adenoid Hynkel, a biting satire of Adolf Hitler, is so off-the-wall, so silly that it accomplishes exactly what Chaplin sought out to do - to make the world laugh at Hitler, to rob him of his power. Mel Brooks would do a fine job of defaming Hitler twenty-eight years later in his hilarious debut film, The Producers. If there is one lesson to be learned from this movie (that isn't expressed in the speech at the end), it's that laughter can sometimes be the best medicine. While no one can ever undo the atrocities that Hitler exposed the world to, we can survive, as long as we have our ideals and our sense of humor.