Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Overrated and overhyped

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

While Charlie's multi-talented son Lee is traveling by ship to Europe as a member of the US Olympics team, his father searches at home for a newly invented remote control device for planes which is probably on its way to be sold to some obscure foreign power (the political tensions all over the world are already perceptible three years before the beginning of WW II, but the movie doesn't show any affiliation or enmity yet) - and happens to be on the same ship with Lee and his friends, guarded by a 'femme fatale' (Cecil B. DeMille's adoptive daughter Katherine in her probably best role) who arouses the dislike of the young athletes only because she keeps flirting with one of them although he's got a steady girlfriend...Charlie, in the meantime, has found out the 'traveling route' of the device, and 'overtakes' it, first by plane and then aboard the famous zeppelin 'Hindenburg' (which would crash only a year later). But from the moment on that the athletes (one of whom 'smuggled' it into the country without even knowing it), the spies and the police mingle, there is constant confusion, until Charlie seems to have it safely in the hands of the German police authorities - BUT the spies have got Lee...From this moment, we really FEEL the agony of Charlie as a father, and his dilemma of handing the important invention over to the spies or risking his son's life - certainly a very earnest and dramatic entry in the 'Charlie Chan' movies, but not without its lighter moments; and besides that, we get a glimpse of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - a real time document.

The 1936 Olympics in Berlin provide a background for the theft of an aerial guidance system in Charlie Chan At The Olympics. Back in Honolulu the device is stolen from inventors John Eldredge and Jonathan Hale and two people are killed. Clues indicate that the device is on its way to Berlin, not for use by the Nazi government, but to be sold on the Berlin black market. As it turns out number 1 son Lee Chan played by Keye Luke is a member of the US swimming team and is in the relay events. So Warner Oland takes both the China Clipper across country and then the Hindenburg to beat Lee to Berlin. As it turns out such sinister types as C. Henry Gordon and Katharine DeMille are on the boat as well.Oland recovers the device, but then the bad guys kidnap Keye Luke and he has to think as a father as well as a detective to get his son back. During all this time he has the full cooperation of the German police.The German inspector is played by Fredrik Vodaging and while a bit authoritarian you would not believe that this is a totalitarian dictatorship. In fact the politics of Nazi Germany is completely erased from this film. The way Chan and Vodaging work together you would hardly believe that this is a place believing in Aryan supremacy.Newsreel footage of the 1936 Olympics including Jesse Owens broad jump is blended in with the film. But I have to say watching this film now it really threw me for a loop.

Charlie has his youngest helper ever - or at least in any of the 20 Chan films I've seen - as 12-year-old Charlie Jr. joins Number One Son Lee as they both help dad solve a crime.Lee (Keye Luke) plays a member of the United States Olympic swimming team in this adventure. The repartee between Chan (Warner Oland) and his two sons in here is terrific. Layne Tom Jr. plays Charlie Junior.The Chan movie is more of an adventure than the normal whodunit as Charlie and the cops travel to the Olympics in Munich, Germany in search of a missing radar-plane "black box." Lee is kidnapped at the games and his dad does everything he can to get his kidnapped son back while not jeopardizing the United States in the process. This is one of the better Chan films and will be available on DVD in December, 2006, as part of another Charlie Chan DVD package of four movies.

excellent in all respects.Probably one of the finest in the entire series. The setting is unique and it's a well done mystery. Documentary footage of the '36 Olympics and the Hindenberg are well situated in this drama. The political atmosphere of Germany during the mid-late 30's is, however, overlooked. Warner Oland again is at his best.This is a must see for Chan fans