Robert Downey Jr. takes the title role in this dramatized biography of the great pioneering silent movie star. Chaplin’s real life was stuffed with scandalous tidbits - romances with much younger women, an ugly paternity suit, clashes with the Hollywood elite, accusations of communism - and those all make it into the film, but muster very little power. Perhaps because they’re noted and discarded so quickly, mere bumps in the golden-paved road that barely cause an inconvenience. The film tries to excuse this with a flimsy framing device, the gray-haired star discussing his career with a biographer and intentionally skipping the difficult or revealing bits, but I don’t buy it. Instead it feels intentionally glossy and reverent, a take that’s more into its subject as a heroic underdog than a real, flawed human being.

And hey, great, I revere Chaplin too. We don’t need to drag him through the mud to make this biopic interesting... but it does need to be interesting. In that crucial respect, _Chaplin_ is a whiff. Intriguing as it may be to see Tony Stark cosplaying as the little tramp, Marisa Tomei as Mabel Normand, Kevin Kline as Douglas Fairbanks (perfect casting) and an underaged Milla Jovovich as one of Chaplin’s underaged brides, there’s very little to carry this film beyond sentiment and star power.

A true coattail-rider, told with a dearth of energy and enthusiasm, which is ironic as those are precisely the traits that have made its subject so beloved in the hundred-plus years since his heyday.