Charly | | Cast : | Cliff Robertson, Claire Bloom | | Director : | Ralph Nelson | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned | | Released Date : | September 23, 1968 | | DVD Released Date : | March 08, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 21, 2005 | | Summary | Charley | Content
 | Imaginative story of a retarded young man who is given an experimental treatment that causes his mental function to improve exponentally over time. The changes in his life style, experiences, relationships and capabilities are all sensitively depicted by an excellent performance by Cliff Robertson. Clair Bloom, Sean Connery's exwife turns in a good supporting performance as well as providing a romantic subplot. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 03, 2005 | | Summary | The book is a lot better and more real-like than movie. | Content
| I read the book twice, one 20 years ago when I was in school and second time recently. I still enjoyed it. I watched the DVD movie last night and was disappointed that it was not as good as the book. It was a little off the point (scenes, plots, and character like Dr. Strauss in the book was a man and Dr. Straus - different spelling in the movie was a woman as I have nothing against). The point is that the movie could have been better with better script, editing, and directing with Cliff Robertson still in it. Good performance by Cliff Robertson helped save the movie. If it was acted by unknown actor, then the movie would have been boring. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" with Jack Nicholson is much better in comparison, even though, they were made 7 years apart. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 12, 2005 | | Summary | Widescreen Version Is On The Disk | Content
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I'm happy to confirm what the earlier gentleman reported. The DVD is dual-format, with both widescreen and pan-and-scan versions on the disk.
MGM itself created the confusion and anger among those of the public who cared, by listing the disk as full-screen format only. Who knows how that may have hurt sales, when it could have been so easily avoided.
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| Rating | | | Date | March 05, 2005 | | Summary | Pretty good, in the circumstances | Content
| 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. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 03, 2005 | | Summary | DVD has two versions | Content
| This DVD has both the full screen 1.33 version and widescreen 2.35 version. So, there's no need to cry foul. |
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