Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: Judged on its own merits, The Truth About Charlie is a very well made and entertaining movie. Compared to Charade, it's maybe a bit more fun in some areas, but generally not as easy to take. I think it's a bit unfair to compare it to the original... especially since it doesn't have the "star power" (or whatever)of Audrey Hepburn or Carey Grant (although I think Thandie Newton fills out the role nicely... Marky Mark, though his presence is a bit grating, doesn't do terribly). Jonathan Demme, probably the superior director (considering Stop Making Sense and Melvin and Howard), allows for a fairly rough but moderately styled movie (less Oceans 11, more The Limey).I'd as much watch Charade, but The Truth About Charlie was very much fun... the dvd also makes a great purchase, as it contains the original Charade (original aspect ratio! not pan+scan like MY dvd .... as well as the remake... two superior movies for a pretty decent price. Purists and rich people might want to hunt down the Criterion dvd of Charade on ebay ..., which features a commentary that is supposed to be great.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth About Charlie
Review: 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).
Rating: 
Summary: 5 Stars for Charade and 3 Stars for The Truth About Charlie!
Review: 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, Tim Robbins and Christine Boisson is very good but the plot which has it's moments is kind of uneven and rushed but it's not horrible but just 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 because though not as good as the original I personally feel it's not as bad as the reviewers who gave it 1 and 2 stars have made it out to be. I heard a rumor 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!
Rating:
Summary: An inexpensive way to buy a masterpiece: "Charade" !
Review: "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.
Rating: 
Summary: ... and how NOT to do it.
Review: Why? Why? WHY does Hollywood do this kind of remake so often? Are the major studios so bereft of talent they can't come up with something original without desecrating a classic like Charade? For every Cape Fear, which actually improved upon the original film, there are loads of Psychos, Planet of the Apes (stop making remakes Mark Wahlberg!), Last Man Standings (a remake of TWO superior films, Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars) and Sabrinas (Julia Ormond, one of the least charismatic actresses of all time trying to fill Audrey Hepburn's shoes). The mere presence of Cary Grant AND Audrey Hepburn in the original alone should have prevented this junk from being made. Jonathan Demme, the director of the great Silence of the Lambs, attempts to put a modern edge on the original story by Peter Stone. Much of the action is filmed by a hand held camera with jerky non-precision that gave me a headache watching it. I understand that a director of a remake has to put his own spin on the original story. However, Demme has leeched all of the beauty out of Paris (The City of Lights looks more like a Eastern European city during the Soviet era rather than the Paris depicted in Charade). He has sapped the charm out of the story, trying to make it more serious in tone, but just succeeds in making it boring. And, worst of all, he has replaced Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn with actors who have no business assuming these roles. To be fair, absolutely no one can fill Grant and Hepburn's shoes. But Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton bomb miserably in the roles. The chemistry in Charade between the two leads crackled. The chemistry between Wahlberg and Netwon is non-existent. The two leads have none of the charm and spark of their predecessors in the roles and are horrible casting choices for these roles. Jonathan Demme recently completely a remake of the Frank Sinatra classic The Manchurian Candidate. I certainly hope, for his sake, that he did a much better job with that film. If he keeps making duds like this one, anyone who sees Silence of the Lambs will view Demme as a potentially great director who frittered his career away making stupid and pointless remakes. (I would have given this DVD one star, but the presence of the complete film of Charade as one the extras warrants another star for the release) See Charade for how to do it right.
Rating: 
Summary: TERRIBLE
Review: My husband and I just watched this movie yesterday and both agreed that it was terrible. I have seen (and loved) Charade previously, but he had not and we both did not like the movie for the following reasons: 1. The Chemistry between Walberg and Newton was non-existent. You kept asking yourself during the movie, why do they like each other, and why do I care what happens to them. 2. The constant close-ups on people's faces was annoying. 3. Charlie's crazy mother was a bizarre addition that was not entertaining. 4. The plot dragged along and seemed to go nowhere. There was no suspense. Tim Robbins appeared to be suspicious and guilty the entire time. And when they all go out dancing together, you wonder why Newton is scared of any of them. I could go on, but those were the main reasons we didn't enjoy the movie. Watch Charade instead!
Rating:
Summary: An inexpensive way to buy a masterpiece: "Charade" !
Review: "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.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money or your time!
Review: It's crap. Avoid renting or purchasing. Instead buy Charade and sit back and enjoy some of the finest acting ever to hit the silver screen. If you like films with swirling, spinning camera shots and fast cuts that try to make up for the poor acting in this film, then...no, I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Demme's "New Wave" Style Remake Just Doesn't Work
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: This was really bad!
Review: 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.
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