Charly
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Movie Reviews of Charly
Movie Review: timeless and important picture
Summary: 5 Stars
you'll love it or you'll hate it . you might fall somewhere in the spectrum in between . i do not like green eggs and ham . check it out .Movie Review: A Great Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a wonderful story about a man with a low IQ who is turned into a genius and back again. Poignant and true to the original story.Movie Review: Charly review
Summary: 5 Stars
I find the story hopeful and sad together. It is a great story.Movie Review: Very moving story, great role for Robertson
Summary: 4 Stars
Charly is a very moving movie from 1968 that gave star Cliff Robertson his first and only Oscar win, a well deserved nomination at that. Charly Gordon is a mentally disabled man with an IQ of 70. He lives in a single room that he rents with basically nothing more than a bed, a table, and a chalkboard where he writes his things to do for the next day. Charly works at a bakery where the people he thinks are his friends, his co-workers, always make fun of him and play practical jokes. But he doesn't let much stop him, going to night school everyday for 2 years to learn to read and write. Then, a doctor with a new procedure comes along and offers Charly the chance to become smart. Charly undergoes the procedure and almost overnight becomes a new man, in just a few weeks he is a genius. But everything is not quite what it seems as Charly begins to experience life all over again and see what the world is really like. This was a very powerful movie from beginning to end. It could almost be divided into two separate movies and still been very good. As a viewer, you come to really know Charly, which makes the ending, especially the final shot, that much more moving. Definitely give this movie a try.
In the performance that won him his lone Academy Award, Cliff Robertson stars as Charly Gordon, the mentally disabled middle aged man who has his life change drastically in the matter of days. Robertson is really playing two roles here, pre-surgery Charly and post-surgery Charly. Always a very strong actor throughout his career, Robertson pulls off both parts beautifully and really makes you feel with and for the character. Claire Bloom plays Alice Kinian, Charly's teacher who becomes much more than his teacher as Charly goes through the transformation following the surgery. Bloom is very good next to Robertson. Lilia Skala plays Dr. Anna Straus, one of the doctors who works with Charly and ultimately, has his best interest at heart. Leon Janney plays Straus' opposite, Dr. Richard Nemur, who seems to only be interested in how famous he will become. The movie also stars Ruth White, Dick Van Patten, Ed McNally, Barney Martin, William Dwyer, and Dan Morgan.
It's too bad more couldn't have been done with this DVD release. The disc has full screen and widescreen presentations of the movie, but nothing else. Not even a trailer! Maybe a Special Edition is out there with interviews with Robertson and Bloom. No special features or not, this is an excellent movie and should not be missed, if for nothing else than to see Cliff Robertson's great performance as Charly Gordon. Don't miss Charly!
Movie Review: Pretty good, in the circumstances
Summary: 4 Stars
Taken from the book Flowers for Algernon, the movie "Charly" is of course not going to be an exact retelling of the book, as no movie is. Since the book was written in the fifties and the movie made in the sixties, the movie puts a certain spin on it that could only have been used in the sixties, with split-screens, running down endless hallways, and even a neon "LOVE" sign at one point. This may take a little away from the book's message. The movie also fails to deal with Charlie's sexual problems, making his romance with Alice Kinnian, which did happen in the book, an instant story of too-mushy true love, rather than the book's description of Charlie's tortured longing for a real relationship while he remains emotionally a child, even as a genius. Alice mentions something in the movie about not being able to keep up with Charlie's intellect, which is much more of a conflict in the book. In this change they also eliminate the entire conflict with Charlie's family, especially his mother, which was quite vital to the storyline in the book. The movie, when not compared with the book, is melodramatic and the transitions from retardate to genius and back again are shown poorly, with little of the emotional perspective that could have been very exciting. However, Robertson's Oscar was not undeserved, as he manages to play Charlie well with both too low and too high an IQ, and shows his indignance well when Charlie realizes those he thought were friends treated him as less than human while he laughed along. I think the first part of the movie, where Charlie struggles to be accepted for the experiment, is more heartwarming than the rest of it up to the very end. The scientific convention is handled vaguely and shortly. However, all in all, I think that without my frustration at its difference from the novel, it would have been averagely entertaining, with some high points.