Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

ironhorse_iv Directed by Ralph Nelson and adapted from the novel 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes, the movie tells the story of Charlie Gordon (Cliff Robertson), a mentally handicapped bakery worker. I'm glad the movie change the title from Flowers for Algernon (which refers to the protagonist's fellow test subject - a white mouse) to Charly. Charlie soon become a test subject of his own, to an experiment to increase human intelligence. Led on, by his teacher Alice Kinnian (Claire Bloom) and other doctors, Charlie agree to the new surgical procedure, not knowing if it is going to work or not. When it was done on Gordon, things become clearer for him, leading to both positive triumph and negative tragic results. I have to say, without Cliff Robertson as Charlie Gordon, this movie wouldn't had work. Cliff Robertson brings in the role, both the childish charm, and the smarts. Cliff Robertson has always wanted to do this movie, ever since starting in the dramatic television TV Show's CBS's Steel Hour, where one of its episodes was 'The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon', an adaption of the same novel by Daniel Keyes. After a number of his TV shows, in which he acted upon were turned into films with other actors playing his role, such as 1961's the Hustler & 1962's Days of Wine and Roses. Robertson bought the rights to the story, hoping to star in the film version one day. To my knowledge, I heard that 1961's TV episode and this movie written by Stirling Silliphant are mostly similar to each other in the beginning, but the movie has some really awful montages to make the length of the story longer than a one hour movie. There is the awful creepiest and disturbing series of montages about Charlie learning about love & sex. The movie could had explore it in a clever way, but it just goes off the wall acid trip with awkward sexually assaults. The film uses a montage sequence to show Charlie with a mustache and goatee riding a motorcycle, kissing a series of different women, smoking and dancing. It's never explain if it was just a dream or it really did happen. I thought it really went so far off from the rest of the film, that it was distracting. I know, the producers probably wanted to show that he is going through extreme adolescence due to the speed of knowledge being fed into him, but I really doubt a growing genius is going to go all Brando from the Wild Ones. He's more liking to become a book nerd than that. About the romance, I thought it could had been told better, when he passes normal IQ and moves into the genius category. I would love to see the film explain more on his emotional development falling behind, as he become more misanthropy jaded and cynical. Unlike other critics, I love the Q&A sequence. It really hits home to see how much he was right about society in the future. You can really tell, the movie was made in the 1960's with this sequence in the film. You get all those split screens, multiple images, still shots or slow motion that kinda works, but also dissonantly out of place. It could had work more, if the movie follow the same format as the book. The book was told entirely in journal entries or progress reports. It does a wonderful job of showing how Charlie's intelligence changes. It is often used in School Study Media. There are many different between the book and the film version. The movie barely spoke about Charlie's abusive parents. Charlie's sexual issues are due to traumatic experiences with his mother, Rose; he almost has a reverse Oedipus Complex, fearing his mother and relying on his father for protection. There is no mention of the character of Fay Lilliman that was Charlie's love interest besides Alice. She was an overtly sexual, artistic, and whimsical person that could had been used in the scenes between Charlie as an adolescence male and Charlie as an ego mastermind. Nor does the movie explore Charlie's dealing with homosexuality. There isn't any mention of the religion tones such as the speech about Adam & Eve and the tree of knowledge. I found the biggest lost is the symbol of the window. The window symbolizes the emotional distance that Charlie feels from others of normal mental ability. I understand that even a slim novel has to be trimmed to fit into movie form, but other things were added that brought nothing of comparable value to the film. Film's direction is a bit clumsy in the middle, but it does find the right path by the end. I love the metaphors mention of Plato's Allegory of the Cave & Don Quixote. That really got me to like it. People who've read the literary work before seeing the film are usually biased against the film. I am definitely not part of that crowd, I found the movie thought provoking. The movie does show the mistreatment of the mentally disabled. There is a key scene where Charlie as a genius, helps a retarded waiter whose clumsiness is cruelly laughter at by the pub's patrons. This is after he finds out that he also been mistreated at his own job by his co-workers and Charlie himself repeatedly looks down on those around him for not being at his level of super-intelligence. Charlie struggles with the same tendency toward the same prejudice and condescension he has seen in other people, when dealing with the mentally disabled. Then there is the tension between intellect and emotion. Are people more compassionate, warm, and friendly when dumb down or when you gains intelligence, we tend to fight more often? Overall: Albert Einstein once quoted 'the different between stupidity and genius is that genius has it's limited'. While this movie is indeed limited, it was worth watching

alexkolokotronis Before watching Charly I had been told to avoid watching this film having just read the book. Of course I didn't do myself justice and decided to watch the film anyway. The film simply rushes through the whole storyline trying to fit too many themes in a minimum amount of opportunities in a mere hour and forty minutes.As stated before the length of the film was much too short in order to get across the message in an efficient way let alone in a strong manner. This had a large indirect or maybe direct effect on the performance of that of Cliff Robertson who plays Charly. The transformation of his happens at lightning quick speed which undermines the book in not displaying the long and grueling process Charly had to face in which he was constantly being treated like a lab experiment. Also the way he deals with his feeling on loneliness and lack or respect is in no way the same as he did in the book which was much more understandable and seemingly much more realistic in the way Charly would have reacted. Instead in the movie he drives off and becomes wild and crazy without a second thought. A rushed script here leads easily to a rushed movie with glaring problems, even more so then the leading character.Ralph Nelson, the director of this film, took the wrong approach here trying to have Charly change so drastically at such a fast pace. The transformation in itself is shocking enough. There is no need to further try and make the lead character undergo this rapid change because it takes away from the substance of the film and ultimately the rest of the film with it. The entire film rests on this one leading character and the director certainly displayed that challenge here, unfortunately it was not displayed in the way that it should have been. I would not recommend this film especially if you read the book because it is filled with just to many contradictions throughout and faces its own themes in a overly simplistic way and method. The film fails miserably in trying to describe such a complex problem effectively and certainly doesn't give any answers in a precise or convincing manner. Sadly this film becomes a parody of itself.

Syl Cliff Robertson earned an Academy Award for playing the title role based on the novel by Daniel Keyes entitled "Flowers for Algernon." His portrayal is heartbreaking and you can't help but feel for the character who is the butt of so many jokes by his so-called colleagues and friends at his workplace, a bakery. Seinfeld's Barney Martin and Dick Van Patten play his co-workers. The divine Claire Bloom (who should be made a Dame) is the sympathetic attractive teacher. Ruth White plays the landlady in one of the last film roles before her death in 1969 from cancer. The setting is filmed on location in Boston, Massachusetts.

waynepenner "I want to be smarter, just so I could get a little closer, you know?" Charly GordonMade in the days when doctors smoked cigarettes, this is Cliff Robertson's brilliant portrayal of a man isolated from society by an IQ of 69 who through a brain operation becomes a genius.Robertson won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Actor in 1968 for his part in this wonderful and inspiring film, and it's a great movie, albeit on a "b-movie" budget. But entwined in its message is a dark reflection on how society treats people who are mentally handicapped.Charly is the nicest guy you would ever meet, considerate of all, kind, but simple and naïve. Everyone around him either laughs at him or is condescending toward him. No one sees him as a man, not even a human being, just whatever they label him as - "dumb-assed janitor", or just plain "moron". Then he gets his operation and becomes the smartest man on Earth, but still he is labeled, and still he is isolated.What I got most from this film is not a clinical study of mental retardation but the way society deals with mental retardation, and in this the film soars, and it will bring a tear or two if you have even a bit of humanity. It is a wonderful film, on many levels, testing us all on how we deal with those who are so unfortunate as to be mentally handicapped.In "Charly", society doesn't win in the end, but the movie does! 9 out of 10.