Customer Reviews

The Truth About Charlie / Charade

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Charade is a teriffic movie!

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn shine in their rolls as does the supporting cast of James Coburn, Walter Matthau, Ned Glass, and George Kennedy.

The remake, the Truth about Charlie has a great cast, Thandie Newton, Tim Robbins and Mark Wahlburg but even they can's save this turkey!

Jonathan Demme is usually a great director, his movie Philadelphia was amazing but he tried to hard to make this Charade remake into some sort of arty movie and it just didn't work and I like arty movies. Also the plot was a mess, there was too much going on at once, the criminals weren't as compelling as in the original and were very boring and I definitely have to agree with the previous reviewer that the added character of Charlie's crazy mother was awful, she was an awful addition and just didn't fit in to the story and the twist ending during the end credits involving her and Tim Robbins character was stupid.

This DVD is only worth buying for Charade because it's shown in a beautiful anamorphic format and is cheaper then the Criterion DVD but if the Criterion DVD goes on sale I will buy it and get rid of this DVD!

"Charade" is the very best romantic comedy thriller ever made. It is Stanley Donen's masterpiece, and the only film collaboration between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. I've watched it as many times as "Singin In The Rain", because just like that famous musical it makes me smile! My original copy of "Charade" was a cheap VHS knock-off. Universal apparently long ago let the copyright lapse, so they never promoted a video, and for the same reason "Charade" was unjustly ignored by the AFI, since the commercial reason for the AFI lists was to promote the sale of videos.

The less said about "The Truth About Charlie" the better! The charming "Melvin and Howard" is the best Jonathan Demme film I have seen.

Can't we give this movie a little credit? It has merit of it's own without being compared to Charade. Truthfully I'd give The Truth About Charlie 3 1/2 stars. It is a good movie with a good plot (taken from Charade), interesting characters, suspense, and romance. The filming was original with unique camera angles and some choppy editing but if you like Mulon Rouge's editing you won't mind this. The romance is more believable than the one weakly developed in Charade and the plot is more understandable than it was in the original. This movie will appeal to people the original will never reach because some people simply aren't into old movies. The main characters had great chemistry- Walburg is handsome (not gorgeous) and the woman is ravishingly beautiful and I enjoyed seeing her give a serious twist to an sillier Hepburn character. She has that grace that Audrey had as well. Charade I have to give at least 4 stars to because it's two of the greatest actors of all time (who as a bonus are both gorgeous) and is much funnier than the remake (though the remake did some things better).

I was in a record store looking at the used DVD's they had for sale and I saw this DVD and the price was very reasonable especially for one of the bonus features which is an anamorphic widescreen version of Charade that has good picture quality and is on the other side of this Truth about Charlie DVD. The Truth about Chalie is ok and the acting from Thandie Newton, Mark Wahlberg, and Tim Robbins is good but the plot which has it's ok moments is kind of uneven and rushed and of course is nowhere near as good as Charade which is a fantastic movie and it was so worth buying this DVD just to get a nice copy of that gem! Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant are wonderful and charming and Walter Matthau was also very good and so were James Coburn and George Kennedy who were the best of the villains. I was going to buy the Criterion Widescreen Charade DVD but it went out of print and the last time I was looking to buy it used the lowest price was 50 dollars so I bought this used Truth About Charlie/Charade DVD instead and the 5 stars is for Charade while if I was just rating The Truth About Charlie I would give it 3 stars for the good acting from Thandie Newton, Mark Wahlberg and Tim Robbins but I wouldn't rate it more then 3 stars because of the uneven plot. I just found out that Criterion is putting out a new anamorphic Widescreen DVD for Charade and I would buy it but only if the extra features are are so good that it would make it worth paying the expensive Criterion prices! Btw: the Paris location scenes in both movies are great!

Now let's forget it. I mean not this film, but the fact that "The Truth about Charlie" is a remake of Stanley Donen classic "Charade." We know there is no way of replacing the two elegant leads of the original, and Jonathan Demme also knows that. The truth about "The Truth about Charlie" is that the "remake" looks more like a homage to French cinema, as I explain later.

The story is fundamentally the same. Thandie Newton's Regina, whose newly-wed "Charlie" is killed on the train, finds that her late husband didn't reveal the real identity of him. Many suspicious people show up around her, apparently looking for something she does not know. And one of them is Joshua Peters, played by Mark Wahlberg, who keeps on appearing exactly at the right moment she needs him. But can she really trust him? And there is another man Tim Robbins who gives some tips, but can she trust them?

But you will never find what you want if you wish to see suspence, wit, or whatever you found attractive in the original film. Jonathan Demme is more interested in making the whole film look as if a product of the 1960s French New Wave Cinema, using shaky hand-held camera, shooting from a peculiar angle, or showing the techniques such as jump-cut. The film also is filled with some oddball humor (see the ending in which he parodies one of his own films in the past).

The dead giveaway is the inclusion of Anna Karina (ex-wife of Jean Luc Godard), one of the muses of the New Wave movement. And when you hear her song "Sous le soleil Exactment" in a Paris taxi, Demme's intention becomes too clear to be ignored. The film looks as if Jonathan Demme respects not so much Stanley Donen as Godard or other French cinema directors. That's why you see the cameo of Agnes Varda, too.

But the point is ... can you do that with "Charade"? With a big Universal logo? It is not what we (I mean, we in general) expect to see. If the audicences hate this remake, and blame the director for making such liberty of messing around, that is only natural.

What I find more irritating is not Demme's idea; it's actors. Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton has no presence, and the couple show nothing remarkable -- no charisma, no chemistry, no humor, nothing, especially Ms. Newton's acting is so awful ("overacting" is a kind word here) that I started to think that was all intentional. And you see one of Tim Robbins' worst turns. Actually he only stands and delivers creaky dialogues as if he is a cyborg. You see no Tim Robbins of "Mystic River." I Hope this Tim is his understudy or stand-in.

"The Truth about Charlie" is just another instance of how not to remake a film, especially when the original is a beloved one, whatever laudable intention you got. You just can't do that.

Ouch! I watched this without knowing it was a remake. After about 20 minutes I could see a thin plot of Charade popping out. This film was a bore and really annoyed me. I kept wanting Cary Grant or someone nearly as good looking to come on the screen. Mark Wahlberg was a bore and lacked the romance/grace of Cary Grant. Some movies should never be remade. I love Charade. It would have been good to know it was a remake. I only watched it to the end to see how badly they could butcher Charade.

Wow. What an awful film. I saw this for sale in the bargain bin (along with Bend it like Beckham, which is a great movie, so didn't want to condemn Truth About Charlie based on its price alone). I didn't have to. There are plenty of other reasons to hate it.
I personally never saw the original movie CHARADE (which 'Charlie' is remaking), so I had about as open a mind as possible when viewing this. Also, because I live in Europe, the DVD copy I bought did not include CHARADE like its American Region 1 counterpart, so I can't compare the two films like other reviewers. I can only warn you how bad 'Charlie' is.

As a rule, I don't usually write the plot summaries to movies when I review them. In the case of 'Charlie' however, I couldn't even if I wanted to. The plot just made no sense.

The ACTORS: I like Thandie Newton, but she mimics the audience's own confused reaction so often and accurately, that when she starts to act like she knows what's going on, we feel betrayed, because we know she couldn't possibly have made sense of this mess of a film before us. Mark Wahlberg is really not that bad an actor, but he's so fake in this role, and Tim Robbins is even more hammy. Add in Lisa Gay Hamilton (formerly of TV's The Practice), some french actors, hey, even Ted Levine (who plays Buffalo Bill in Demme's Silence Of The Lambs) appears for a few scenes. Steven Dillane - who was excellent in SPY GAME - is Charlie, even though we only get to hear his good French accent for all of 30 seconds in the beginning of the film, and subsequently only see him in corny flashbacks as the film progresses. What a waste of acting talent.

The MUSIC: Sound and music affect moods in movies a lot more than people realise. This film is a prime example where the music undermines the potential for suspense. It sounds like composer Rachel Portman basically just collected a bunch of songs from some sad sampler CD and inserted them randomly. Music starts and stops at really odd times, like some cheasy no-name tune will be playing in the background and then suddenly stop when a character hangs up the phone, other times elevator muzak accompanies Newton when she is running frantically through the streets of Paris. If the music IS ever any good, it's so deliberate, that it become's too much of a character in its own right, which isn't what movie scores normally are supposed to do - unless of course, it's for a Quentin Tarantino film.

The FILM: The editing is weird. The camera jiggles constantly. There are way too many close-ups of the actor's faces. The flashbacks have this totally low-budget handycam look to them. Everyone chases Newton in the film, and it's only after an hour of DVD running time has passed that she decides to take a closer look at the contents of the bag that all the bad guys are desperate to peek into. Everyone is a potential traitor (a very cheap and tired method for a script to allow for plot twists). There is no comedy. No believable romance. No sex. No action. No drama. And most of all - thanks to the shaky camera and crappy elevator music - there's no suspense whatsoever either. Man, just check out that final showdown scene in the rain with all the pathetic close-ups, does any one give a hairy rat's butt what happens?

Regina returns to Paris to find her apartment stripped of everything and to make matters worse the police soon turn up to tell her that her husband is dead! Murdered!
Soon she learns that Charlie was not the man she thought he was, as a matter of fact it seems Charlie was many men in one, as the police show her numerous passports with Charlies picture on each, only associated with a different name. Just who was Charlie.
Soon Regina realizes that she is in danger as it seems Charlie has stolen 6 million dollars and many dangerous people want it back. Regina becomes their only link to the money and so the adventure begins.
I felt this movie had some good qualities, it was mysterious and kept you guessing for a while, but considering it was a remake of Charade, it left you a little wanting. However, it had some good acting and I think you would enjoy watching it.

After regurgitating, I was able to collect my thoughts on this film. It starts out inept and only gets worse from there. You immediately have to turn off the sound to bypass the noise that introduces the film. Then you get your first taste of nudity designed to cover up a pathetically lacking dialog. At first the camera is jumping around and you figure it will finally slow down and focus some time during the film. Can you say Blair Witch? It only gets worse so get out the Dramamine. The comedy had been stripped along with any semblance of synergy between the so-called actors. The film looks like a high school contest submission.

Even the story has-been changed leaving a hand full of names that are the only thing that were brought over from the previous script. The TV type plot is not worthy of being described here. Mixed with the sound bite formula and poor music is a name recognition plug for some has-been singer.

What? You say "how about the free copy of Charade on the combined product?" Believe me if you have to buy this, then Charade is not free. You will be much better off to find a copy of the Criterion Collection version the extra commentaries are worth the price.

The film is a remake of the Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant classic, Charade. Regina (Newton), Charlie's wife, comes home from vacation to find her home completely empty and her husband murdered. Some very nasty characters, apparently her husband's former colleagues, believe she is in possession of a very valuable item. Regina no longer feels safe and, just then, in steps the handsome stranger (Wahlberg), to her rescue. This sounds like the original, correct?

Well, The Truth About Charlie is that Johnathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) should have left Peter Stone's original screenplay alone. This remake is disjointed and badly acted. Newton's performance is weak, Wahlberg is stiff, and halfway into the movie you don't care what the truth about Charlie is....you just want to return the film.

Buy this DVD as cheaply as possible, only because it includes a copy of Charade on the flip side. If this version is not available, purchase the original.