What is Chaplin’s peculiar gift? It is his power to stand for a sort of concentrated essence of the common man, for the ineradicable belief in decency that exists in the hearts of ordinary people, at any rate in the West.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2023

... confronts the hatred and anti-Semitism of Hitler’s Germany in the days before America’s entry into World War II while lampooning the despots responsible.

Full Review | Aug 19, 2023

It works wonderfully, but The Great Dictator will perhaps be remembered most fondly for Chaplin’s moving closing speech.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2022

For me the film contained one major error: the final speech... This finale is so blatantly out of harmony with what has gone before as to nullify much of the effectiveness of the preceding two hours.

Full Review | Aug 9, 2022

It is not... the genius of Chaplin that permitted him to create The Great Dictator. It was nothing but that moustache. The Tramp waited for the right moment, did what he had to do, then escaped for all eternity with his facial hair intact.

Full Review | May 26, 2022

Chaplin beckons the viewer to recognize and fight against tyrants, and every few years, as another despot comes along, The Great Dictator becomes achingly relevant again.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

Charlie Chaplin's first talkie became an example of an effective satire. One that was way ahead of its time. [Full review Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2021

Though The Great Dictator provides a good many laughs [it] merits serious consideration for the superior presentation of the message it is trying to put across to that part of the world where democracy is still a precious possession.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2021

More than the expected assemblage of skits, the film attempts to tell a grander, straightforward story, but utilizes too many subplots in the process.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 5, 2020

The Great Dictator (1940) is director/actor Charlie Chaplin's first full all-talking ("talkie" with dialogue) picture (in a film similar to the Marx Brothers' anti-war comedy Duck Soup (1933)) in which he delivered spoken lines...

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Dec 26, 2019

The Chaplin masterpiece is a mecca of motion-picture art to which the industry's devout will make repeated pilgrimages in future years.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2019

The Great Dictator may have been a bold piece of satirical storytelling at the time but the film has aged like fine wine.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 17, 2019

Chaplin contrasts war's delusions of grandeur against traditional human values: truth, liberty, and justice. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 16, 2019

The lessons remain, and the strength of his statement still inspires his descendants - professional or otherwise - to follow his example.

Full Review | Apr 4, 2017

The only trouble is that such perfect scenes as this are followed by more conventional passages which would be funny enough in an average picture but let one down in a film that deals so ambitiously with so great a theme.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2013

...a great movie because it works as a film, and because it is a document of courage and faith, the prime exhibit in Chaplin's humanist brief ... Dictator is a comedy, the work of a clown, but it is no joke. Chaplin had lethal intent.

Full Review | Original Score: 90/100 | May 20, 2012

The first full-blown talkie from the biggest star of the silent era, complete with a message that Chaplin couldn't have sent more loudly or clearly.

Full Review | Jun 1, 2011

While it is not the greatest of Charlie Chaplin's feature films, it is certainly his bravest, if not one of the bravest films ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 30, 2011

Stared evil in the face long before the rest of Hollywood even thought it was possible.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2011

Through no fault of Chaplin's, during the two years he was at work on the picture dictators became too sinister for comedy.

Full Review | Sep 3, 2010