Charlie Chaplin is certainly funny enough. In this movie he shows off his talents in slapstick and acrobatic humour as well as the masterful use of irony for shock value.
Unfortunately, the stoccatto changes in plot and setting didn't help it much and it feels like a collection of shorts featuring this "tramp" character strung together.
At first he's a factory worker where automatisation goes awry, then he's a jailbird, then some sort of burglar, and, most significantly throughout the second half of a movie, a romantic character.
He's not a stable character, either. At one funny juncture in the movie, he threatens to acquire a house by "any means necessary, even if I have to work!" which would be funnier if he'd been established as a lazy slacker, but let us not forget the movie opens with him hard at work in full factory worker's habit in the first vignette. Really the only trait that accompanies him throughout is his tendency to get swept into situations against his will.
It's also very difficult to make constant slapstick funny, especially in a live action movie. And this style of humour comes to have a necessarily patchy laugh factor when it's strongly relied upon in a film.
I understand some attributed communist leanings to the film. A stretch of the imagination indeed. I wouldn't try to draw much deep sociopolitical commentary from this one. Nor do I agree that it deserves to be placed amongst the greats. It's a light entertainment piece that features a respectable comedic performance from Chaplin, namore, naless.
Honourable Mentions: The Hour of the Pig (1993). A scathing critique of medieval society as judicially inefficient, irrationally superstitious, and corrupt. And it just so happens that this is also a valid critique of modern times.
Unfortunately, the stoccatto changes in plot and setting didn't help it much and it feels like a collection of shorts featuring this "tramp" character strung together.
At first he's a factory worker where automatisation goes awry, then he's a jailbird, then some sort of burglar, and, most significantly throughout the second half of a movie, a romantic character.
He's not a stable character, either. At one funny juncture in the movie, he threatens to acquire a house by "any means necessary, even if I have to work!" which would be funnier if he'd been established as a lazy slacker, but let us not forget the movie opens with him hard at work in full factory worker's habit in the first vignette. Really the only trait that accompanies him throughout is his tendency to get swept into situations against his will.
It's also very difficult to make constant slapstick funny, especially in a live action movie. And this style of humour comes to have a necessarily patchy laugh factor when it's strongly relied upon in a film.
I understand some attributed communist leanings to the film. A stretch of the imagination indeed. I wouldn't try to draw much deep sociopolitical commentary from this one. Nor do I agree that it deserves to be placed amongst the greats. It's a light entertainment piece that features a respectable comedic performance from Chaplin, namore, naless.
Honourable Mentions: The Hour of the Pig (1993). A scathing critique of medieval society as judicially inefficient, irrationally superstitious, and corrupt. And it just so happens that this is also a valid critique of modern times.