Search - Charly on DVD

Decent film adaptation of the classic short story

Lawyeraau | 12/18/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Cliff Robertson won the Academy Award for best actor with his excellent portrayal of Charly Gordon. It takes an actor with great versatility to first play a mentally-challenged man and then turn around and portray a surgically-transformed genius; Robertson fills the bill with great satisfaction. To fully appreciate the quality of this film, a great suggestion would be to first read the short story titled "Flowers for Algernon" on which this movie is based."

Pretty good, in the circumstances

M. LaSala | Somewhere out there | 03/06/2005

(4 out of 5 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."

A remarkable film

Kona | Emerald City | 10/20/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Charly (Cliff Robertson) is thirty years old and has the mental age of a young child. He works at a menial job where he is tormented endlessly, and he isn't progressing in his special night school. His teacher, Alice (Claire Bloom), recommends him to a clinic where an experimental operation has radically increased the intelligence of a lab mouse named Algernon. After Charly undergoes surgery, his mental ability starts to soar past normal to the genius level. He and Alice fall in love and make plans for the future, until, sadly, he learns one more thing from Algernon.



Robertson earned an Academy Award for his stunning portrayal of the gentle, childlike man whose life changes completely. He is a mature and charismatic actor and gives a memorable performance. Claire Bloom is also wonderful as his teacher. The script is excellent, never overly-sentimental and always literate and thought-provoking. I recommend this timeless classic as an example of how good movies used to be made."