Jim Carrey and Charlie Chaplin

Some background on the critical response to the work of Charlie Chaplin is necessary. David Weddle (2003) examined several of Chaplin's feature films and argued that Charlie Chaplin was always willing to take enormous risks. He continued to make silent films such as City Lights after sound had been introduced into the movie industry. He also, in The Great Dictator, satirized Adolf Hitler at a time when the world was beginning to recognize Hitler's evil. Released in 1940, The Great Dictator grossed more than any of Chaplin's previous pictures and its success encouraged him to develop Monsieur Verdoux, in which he played a con artist who seduced old widows, married them, and then killed them.

Chaplin, as an actor, writer, and director/producer, created in the character of the Little Tramp, an icon of the silver screen that remains powerful today. He was a prolific worker, making 35 comedies in his first year of filmmaking under the direction of Mac Sennett of Keystone Films. It has been said that "

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t one of several very similar faces of Jim Carrey. Where Charlie Chaplin became the Little Tramp, there is nothing to truly distinguish Jim Carrey from Ace Ventura or Ace Ventura from the lead character in Liar Liar. The depth that can be found in a performance by Chaplin as the Little Tramp is what made Chaplin a genius and his long-running character such a success (Weddle, 2003). Underneath the silliness and the slapstick in which Chaplin engaged as the Little Tramp was a complete human being -- a person capable of compassion, intensity, fear, and the entire gamut of human emotions. In his most popular roles as the over-the-top pet detective, Jim Carrey never or rarely moves beneath the surface. He mugs and hams it up for the camera when a more subtle or nuanced performance would be more effective. Even when playing Truman in The Truman Show, Carrey continued to use his highly mobile face to underscore the comedic aspects of the characters life. Truman is not a fully rounded character in the same way that the Little Tramp is. This is an important distinction and one which suggests that Jim Carrey, though enormously talented and extremely popular is simply not a latter day Charlie Chaplin. Bruce Almighty, Carrey's
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