People are voting emotionally.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

A mentally challenged man named Charly (Cliff Robertson) desires to become smarter so that he wouldn't always be picked on by his so-called friends at his workplace. However, he has made no progress despite his efforts of going to school. One day he gets a chance to undergo some experimental brain surgery and his intelligence skyrockets, making him a genius. Still, he cannot stop feeling like an outsider or find happiness with Alice, the woman he loves (Claire Bloom).The director uses many split screens and other alienating techniques to portray the fragile mental state of Charly; at points they get rather annoying and look dated. The montage near the end, depicting the progression of Charly and Alice's relationship, comes across as rather hasty, considering the scene directly preceding it. Mostly the story advances fine though, and the pondering about the surgery's effects on Charly's psyche is interesting – there should have been more of it, actually. Robertson's Oscar-winning performance in the lead role is decent, although I preferred his calm 'intelligent Charly' to his naïve 'challenged Charly'.

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.

The director, Ralph Nelson, used to be the property master on the Twilight Zone, if I remember correctly, and to be honest he doesn't bring much to the party here. Split screens -- ugh.But this is more than made up for by almost everything else about the film -- the location shooting, the photography, the score, and the performances.People have won Oscars for playing mutes, ADDs, and height-challenged people, as a kind of sign, I suppose, that the voters are on the side of the angels. Cliff Robertson deserved his Oscar, though. He's entirely good in the role. His full-scale IQ is supposed to be around 70 but he brings to his performance the expressions and body language of someone who is profoundly retarded, if the residents of Mussbrugger Hall at the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute are any example. He overacts, that is to say. But it fits the role perfectly.I'll give just one example. Early in the movie, just after the opening, he wanders around a college campus, uncomprehending, as he watches and listens to the students discuss Jung. One of the students flings a jacket over a shoulder. Robertson, in imitation, takes off his own unfashionable leather jacket and flings it over his own shoulder. Not once, but twice -- the first time evidently not having satisfied him. What a neat touch. And it belongs to Robertson.The score is by Pandit Ravi Shankar, of whom we hear little today. But Ravi Shankar belongs up there in the ranks of instrumental virtuosos with Heifitz and Rubenstein. "Sitar" is an from an old Indo-European word, which has also given us "guitar" and "zither".The movie has a tolerant attitude towards such things as smoking pot. "Danger: Smoking May be Hazardous to Your Health." We've come a long way towards self righteousness since then. Now you can't make a joke out of it, let alone actually DO it. This is a complicated subject that I will restrain myself from going on about. My position, in French, could be rendered as "A chaque a son gout." In the end, Charlie loses his boosted IQ and returns to his previous state. I am happy for him that he managed to smoke some dope and get laid in the brief interval of his lucidity.

This is the wost movie I have ever seen. This Movie is based on the book "Flowers for Algernon", but is missing almost everything that made the book good. In the movie there were no flashbacks, he never caught Gimpy stealing from Mr. Donner, he did not get his job back at the bakery at the end of the movie like he did in the book, no progress reports were written, his parents and sister were not even mentioned, Fay was not in the movie, the title of the movie has no meaning because he did not put Flowers on Algernon's grave, Charly and Alice moved to far to fast with there relationship when in the story Charly kept getting sick when he and Alice were getting intimate, and in the movie Charly seemed to get smart too fast which took away from the suspense of the movie. I was much happier with the book, the movie has too many holes in the story.