The reviews for The Truth About Charlie have not been universally bad but, according to movie review website, Rotten Tomatoes, only about 35% of the reviews have been good. What follows is an attempt to understand and refute the negative critical response to the film.

1. CHARADE

The Truth About Charlie is not as good as Charade but its aspirations are different. The Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro complains of Charade's "creaky plot" and argues that it was redeemed by its stars. Without Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, Caro believes that Demme is left with only the original's "creaky plot." Caro fails to understand that, whereas Charade is a traditional thriller with the addition of humour (like Hitchcock's North by Northwest, and a few others), The Truth About Charlie is an anti-thriller. Demme doesn't focus on suspense, plot twists, or the genre's other conventions. He takes a "creaky" suspense thriller story and executes it in his own style. This choice has frustrated several critics. Jeffrey M. Anderson of The San Francisco Examiner criticizes Demme for not revealing the "surprising twist" in the same manner as Donen. But Demme is interested in surprises of human behavior and interaction, not plot. Critics seem reluctant to concede that there's more than one way to tell a story. Demme doesn't aim to imitate Donen's version, he aims to tell the same story differently.

2. A THRILLER WITHOUT THRILLS

As usual, many of the critical errors are best exemplified by the Ed Wood of film critics, Rex Reed (of The New York Observer). He writes that the film is "woefully lacking in suspense" and claims Demme has "incinerated a cherished genre." In The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Todd Anthony calls it a "thrill-less new thriller." Both are ignoring that, while this is a thriller in story, it is an anti-thriller, in execution. Demme's unique contribution to the genre is to replace thrills with laughs. The Truth About Charlie is a plot movie, made by a director who is more interested in character. In fact, Demme is at his weakest when dealing with plot. The exposition-heavy resolution, for example, is the film's weakest sequence. Of course, today's movie audiences (critics and ticketbuyers, alike) prefer movies with one dimensional characters and multi-dimensional plots (ie. The Ring), not the opposite. By diffusing situations with humour, Demme humanizes one of the coldest genres. The film's innocence is established in Thandie Newton's first scene, a variation of Audrey Hepburn's watergun introduction in Charade. We see a look of panic on Newton's face, as she falls out of frame. Although we assume she's in grave danger, our expectations are broken when it's revealed that she's playing with a young boy. This parody of suspenseful storytelling should have tipped the critics off that this is not a conventional suspense film. The Truth About Charlie does not aim to overwhelm us with heavy-handed cliches, it aims to mellow the genre.

3. PACIFISM

Mark Caro complains about the "pointed-gun showdown that Demme stages like a pacifist John Woo." By avoiding the requisite, meaningless thriller bloodbath, Demme is dismissed as a "pacifist." Commendably, Demme has made good on his critique of gunplay in his own film, Married to the Mob. Throughout The Truth About Charlie, guns are seen-but-not-heard. Also, right before Charlie is killed, Demme cuts away. His avoidance of exploitative violence protects the film's delicate, light tone and, again, breaks with the traditions of the suspense thriller.

4. TONE

The L.A. Times' Kenneth Turan believes that The Truth About Charlie "has the kinds of problems with tone and likability that did not plague the original." Todd Anthony complains that "we can't tell what we're supposed to take seriously." Tonally, the film is very different from an ordinary thriller, not only because of its humour but also because of the good will of its characters, even the villains. But one of the most unusual surprises of The Truth About Charlie (particularly after reading the reviews), is just how consistent and unproblematic Demme's tone really is. The shifts in tone are no more jarring than they were in Demme's earlier, critically acclaimed film, Something Wild. Almost as a rule, the film only gets serious in life-and-death situations and, whenever they are resolved (ie. after Mr. Bartholomew puts down his guns, in the climactic showdown), the lighter tone is immediately restored. As far as I can tell, the confusion about tone comes from missed hints of light-heartedness, in the film's more serious scenes. Demme's music choices also re-enforce the film's light, playful tone. Not surprisingly, music has been mentioned in almost none of the negative reviews.

5. THE "STUPID CHASE"

Todd Anthony complains about the film's "stupid chase." In fact, it is not a "chase," it's a race. This may seem like trivial distinction but the race is another novel conceit of the film. The characters aren't trying to hurt one another (although there are a some relatively harmless, weapon-free fights), they're simply competing for a monetary reward. Demme portrays their greed as silly and juvenile, not cool and sophisticated. Anthony doesn't acknowledge that the race is deliberately silly, with the characters showing fatigue, and pushing each other into onlookers, as they pursue their goal. In an ordinary thriller, characters with weaknesses, limited endurance, and gracelessness might look out-of-place but they're consistent with Demme's anti-thriller approach. To dismiss this as a "stupid chase" is to ignore the spirit in which it was intended. Other critics have made light of the fact that this is a foot-race, rather than the obligatory car-commercial-disguised-as-chase-sequence. Again, Demme is interested in people, not machinery. The foot-race causes the characters to pass through locations and obstacles that they would not pass in a car chase. The peculiar nature of the race even allows for an unusual race intermission, as the characters' commute by subway. This isn't an attempt at an authentically thrilling chase, it's a parody of chases in that vein.

6. THE FRENCH NEW WAVE

One of Demme's most dramatic departures from the suspense thriller genre is his use of the stylistic characteristics associated with the French New Wave of the 1960s, rather than the sleek, glossy, dollies-and-tripods style of a conventional thriller. This style brings new life to dated material. In The Village Voice, Michael Atkinson calls the film's story a "badly dated cutesy-pie scenario" and Mark Caro complains about the limitations of "increasingly mundane thriller machinations." But the familiarity of the story is what allows for Demme's stylistic excess. Our familiarity with past incarnations of similar stories affords Demme a greater latitude with experimentation. The narrative, itself, doesn't demand the kind of audience attention and concentration that a fresher, more unique story might. This allows for the distractions, inherent in a more deliberately self-conscious style.

Much like Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, The Truth About Charlie is a throwback to an earlier style of filmmaking. But rather than align a story-type and style that have traditionally gone together (as Haynes has), Demme takes a more experimental, riskier approach. Demme has concocted an unorthodox combination of style and story that has never, or at least rarely, been attempted before. For reasons of clarity, intricate plots require a precision of style that the New Wave rebelled against. Demme is engaged in a similar rebellion. He has divorced a plot-driven story from its plot-clarifying style. This accounts for the trouble critics have had deciphering The Truth About Charlie's plot. New Wave filmmakers made gangster films and even suspense films but they never matched a style this loose and fragmented with a story this precise and narratively traditional.

Todd Anthony complains about Demme's "desire to be noticed," by way of the film's style. But one of the most important characteristics of the early French New Wave films, particularly Jean-Luc Godard's, was their post-modern, self-reflexive filmmaking style. Rather than employ the "invisible style" of classical Hollywood filmmakers (ie. John Ford), they created a style that reminds the audience that they're watching a film. This lends itself to a more active, analytical filmgoing experience, ideal for the commentary on genre that Demme intends (in the 60s, Godard parodied gangster films, musicals, and war films, in this style). This causes us to question and decontruct the tired formulas that we would normally take-for-granted, in a suspense thriller.

Todd Anthony argues that the Charade story and the New Wave style simply don't mix and Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman complains that the film "twists itself into knots to look fancier and more mod than a mere caper." But the film's style is not the only way that The Truth About Charlie deviates from the model of a conventional suspense thriller or, to use Gleiberman's phrase, "a mere caper." Demme's style is intended to comment on the conventional nature of the story, not disguise it. Kenneth Turan adds that Demme "relies overly much on razzle-dazzle" and Todd Anthony says "Demme's loose approach kills the suspense." These comments suggest that the film and its style are two separate entities when, in fact, The Truth About Charlie is defined by its style. Writing that Demme "relies overly much on razzle-dazzle" is like writing that Hitchcock relies overly much on suspense. The "razzle-dazzle" is not a distraction, it is the substance. By imposing a handheld, occasionally realist style on such decidedly non-realist material, Demme makes light of the genre's conventions. By violating the style of the genre and positioning the audience to question what they see, Demme disrupts our passive filmgoing experience. This is one of the reasons that critics have been so much pickier in analyzing The Truth About Charlie than they would be with a James Bond film: Demme shows the seams. As for Anthony's point about suspense, there's no evidence that Demme is trying and failing to manufacture suspense. The overwhelming suggestion is that he has substituted playfulness for tension and suspense. Yet critics insist that, whether Demme likes it or not, all thrillers (even anti-thrillers) require suspense.

Some critics are unable to decipher what Demme wants to achieve with the style and they critique it based solely on its superficial attributes. Few have looked beyond the style's aesthetic qualities to indicate its impact on performance, for example. The New Wave approach is judged aesthetically but not as a method of production. Originally, it came about due to the availability of portable, lightweight cameras, not an aesthetic need for them. By choosing to use handheld cameras, Demme could shoot in the streets of Paris, surrounding his actors with authentic activity from the city. This provides the actor with a realistic atmosphere to respond to. In general, the film has a sense of liberation from the machinery of big budget filmmaking.

Rex Reed isn't sure whether to articulate his negative feelings about the French New Wave or the more widespread, prevailing opinions, in the world of film. So he does both. Initially, he refers to the French New Wave as "pretentious tedium" that is "mostly forgotten now by all but a few critics and Mr. Demme." After calling The Truth About Charlie "messy," "incoherent," "catastrophic," and a "travesty" (all of which could be said of Reed's review, by the way), Reed flip-flops on the New Wave and condemns Demme for lowering its icons (Charles Aznavour, Agnes Varda, Anna Karina) to his level. He then calls The Truth About Charlie "a forgery" that diminishes the "entire school of filmmaking it wants to emulate." If that's not enough (I think it is), Reed calls the film's style "deliberately amateurish" and compares Demme to an "overzealous film-school freshman." Obviously this guy hasn't seen real amateur movies. If glossiness is now synonymous with professionalism, Demme should be commended for his "amateurish" filmmaking.

7. MARK WAHLBERG VS. CARY GRANT

As far as the actors are concerned, Mark Wahlberg has been singled-out and become a punching bag for critics. Although he gives a few awkward line-readings, his performance is definitely not as bad as critics have suggested. In general, criticism has focused on the difference between Mark Wahlberg and his role's originator, Cary Grant. The Wahlberg bashers have ignored ample evidence that Demme has re-configured the role. The rest of the film bears little resemblance to Charade so why is it important that Wahlberg's performance bear any resemblance to Cary Grant's? In order to suggest their own refined understanding and appreciation of film history, these critics relish the opportunity to champion Grant. This method of bashing one actor, in order to praise another, is somewhat suspect. They seem determined to convey that Mark Wahlberg is not in the same league as Cary Grant, as if that weren't already obvious, even to Wahlberg and Demme. As he has repeatedly said in interviews, Demme isn't trying to prove that Wahlberg is the next Cary Grant. If he wanted to make a replica of the original film, using a replica of Cary Grant, then he wouldn't have altered the original's script or style so radically. Critics have also ignored that Wahlberg's character (Joshua Peters) is acting. Rex Reed complains that "this young American everyguy is utterly out of place in the world of sophisticated international espionage." This is obviously by design. Joshua Peters comes across this way because he wants to appear unthreatening to Regina. He wants her to think that he's a harmless tourist, passing through town, not a participant in "sophisticated international espionage."

8. "A PERKY GAMINE"

Critics have generally been kinder to Thandie Newton. However, Owen Gleiberman complains that Newton's Regina is not "a perky gamine in distress but a dour woman in peril." What about the pool scene? What about her hotel room exchange with Wahlberg, with shampoo in her hair? What about her hilarious reactions in the tango sequence? It seems that Gleiberman selectively reviewed the film, on the basis of the scenes he most disliked. And, again, even if she isn't "a perky gamine in distress," must she be one, simply because Audrey Hepburn was, in Charade?

9. CHEMISTRY

As for charges of insufficient chemistry between Wahlberg and Newton, the viewer must bear in mind that their initial romance (which consists of little more than flirting) is not the product of chemistry, it's the product of Regina's vulnerability, loneliness, fear, drinking, confusion, etc. Joshua, on the other hand, is motivated by his search for Charlie's money, not genuine romantic chemistry. Their relationship only really becomes romantic at the film's conclusion and, even then, its future is uncertain. Mark Caro adds that "if we don't admire Joshua like Regina does, we suspect she's a fool for wanting him to hang around." This argument suggests that Regina and the audience are on a level playing field which is not the case. The audience sees Joshua when Regina is not around. We see him interacting with the trio of villains, we see Commandant Dominique express her suspicions to him, and we see him looking around Regina's room, as she showers. Regina is in the dark about all of this. Demme doesn't want the audience to feel the same way about Joshua that Regina does. That's how he communicates her vulnerability.

10. REGINA'S INNOCENCE

Kenneth Turan complains that "even for a bride of three months, Regina knows surprisingly little about the deceased." But that's why she wants to end their marriage. She rushed into marriage before she got to know Charlie and, even before his death, concludes that their relationship is a failure. Turan sarcastically adds that Joshua Peters is "so omnipresent and so cheerfully helpful that it will be a given to everyone but Regina that he's not what he seems." Firstly, why should we question Regina's attraction to a suspicious character? We already know that she married one. Secondly, Turan ignores the ironic idea behind Demme's conception of Regina: the most innocent, harmless, and trusting woman around is placed into conflict with characters who are the polar opposite of all those things. This clash of innocence and corruption makes Regina an unusually intriguing protagonist for a thriller. This also accounts for her peculiar marriage to Charlie. He would be attracted to an innocent naif because he could pull the wool over her eyes. She's not the all-knowing Bond type. When she admonishes her adversaries for never telling the truth, she is genuinely disappointed in them. This idealism is a refreshing change from the super-human sophistication of conventional thriller protagonists. Who wants to see a movie about a woman in jeopardy, if she is too intelligent, knowing, and street-smart to be jeopardized? The film is about a series of scams played on an easily scammed person because it's more entertaining to see a scam succeed than to see one fail. But, unlike Audrey Hepburn's Regina, Newton's Regina isn't a ditz, she's just trusting. And even as she learns to be selective with her trust, she retains her innocence and idealism. Many critics are intolerant of characters who are neither street-smart nor jaded. It's almost taboo to have a protagonist who isn't motivated by money, in the aggressively capitalist climate of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking.

Todd Anthony wonders "if Regina doesn't see fit to worry, why should we?" As already mentioned, we have information that Regina does not. In addition, because she is inexperienced with international intrigue, Regina has a uniquely trusting nature. When Joshua leaves her room with Charlie's bag, Regina assumes it was an accident but the audience senses it wasn't. For the audience, the mystery isn't "Is Joshua using her?" We know that he's using her. The mystery is "Will Regina get away, unscathed, with her good nature in tact?" Caro's criticism is also problematic, in that Regina does eventually become suspicious of Joshua, as the clues pile up, and she attempts to get away from him. Caro goes on to argue that Tim Robbins' (Mr. Bartholomew) "self-amused performance" makes us even more skeptical about Newton's trust for "off-kilter" people. Robbins' performance is a parody of suspicious, thriller villains. Rather than simply criticize Regina's trust of Bartholomew, you'd think Caro might attempt to understand Demme's intention. Regina's trust of Bartholomew, an obviously suspicious character, illustrates her uniquely trusting nature. This violates the genre but it's not an accident. In fact, almost all of Regina's character traits are described, onscreen, by Bartholomew.

11. "TOURIST TRAPS"

Michael Atkinson complains that Demme has "always used 'other' cultures as colorful tourist traps without ever attempting to understand them." This is a fundamental misunderstanding of Demme's egalitarian mindset. He doesn't see people of different races as so radically different that the audience requires a history lesson, before meeting them. Atkinson's suggestion is that races and cultures cannot interact, without some sort of explanation from the filmmaker. Ideally, people would see fit to learn about other cultures after getting a taste of them, in a film like The Truth About Charlie. But the story isn't about cultures clashing so there's no reason for Demme to explore that issue any further than he does.

12. "REJECTS FROM THE JAMES BOND CASTING DEPARTMENT"

Misunderstanding the film as a conventional thriller, Rex Reed calls Regina's adversaries "rejects from the James Bond casting department." Although this was meant as criticism, it is yet another strength of the film. Demme uses characters with obvious fallibility, humor, and humanity where we are accustomed to seeing one-note, cartoonish villains. In some ways, The Truth About Charlie is what a truly modern Bond film would look and sound like, one that understands the word modern to have meaning beyond technology. For one, The Globe & Mail's Liam Lacey acknowledges that Regina's adversaries are a "welcome contrast to the usual three burly guys with facial stubble."

Demme has also come under fire for his audacious decision to have Regina bond with her adversaries. When one of these adversaries, Lola, is hit by a car and killed, Regina is sad and sympathetic toward her. Rarely has the interaction between cinematic opponents been this free of malice. Again, this detracts from tension and suspense but adds a welcome dose of humanity. Demme likes people, even if they are bad people and, unfortunately for The Truth About Charlie, that's out of style, at the moment.

13. DEFINE GLIB

Kenneth Turan complains that the characters have an "unconvincingly glib attitide." But they're not glib (maybe that's why he found their attitude "unconvincingly glib"). The characters don't take on cool, detached poses. The villains actually care about their mission and sincerely believe that they've earned their reward. There's also a pleasant minimum of clever one-liners and, when they're used, they're delivered with self-awareness and warmth, not glib detachment. The characters know they're talking like movie characters, in these moments. The villains aren't always on-top-of-things, nor are they surrounded by state-of-the-art gadgets and cool cars. They're normal greedy people, as opposed to cartoonish greedy people, and they're affectionately depicted as such.

14. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING CHARLIE

Owen Gleiberman argues that the film's ultimate problem is that it "really is after the truth about Charlie, a character we could hardly give a damn about." There's no evidence to support this argument, in the film. We care about Regina, not Charlie. By making their relationship so brief and already concluded, at the film's outset, Demme deliberately reduces the importance of Charlie. Also, in everything we learn about Charlie, it is clear that he's a corrupt, unethical individual. Demme introduces him while he's cheating on his wife, for example. There's no attempt to show his redeeming qualities, nor has Demme attempted to inspire any sympathy for him. Demme wants us to consider the nature of Charlie's wrongdoing, insofar as it relates to Regina, but not care about him. He's certainly not the nucleus of the film.

15. THE FBI & THE MILITARY

Owen Gleiberman also complains that the plot is "padded out to include the war in Sarajevo." Thematically, this allows Demme to continue the critique of American government organizations found in Married to the Mob (the civil liberty-ignoring FBI agents) and The Silence of the Lambs (the patriarchal FBI leadership). The Truth About Charlie's villains are members of the American military and the FBI. They aren't automatically considered suspect because of these positions, but they aren't absolved of guilt, either. Demme doesn't glorify the military. In the course of the film, he familiarizes us with five soldiers, all of whom are corrupt and motivated by greed (like Three Kings but, more critically, without the redemption experienced by that film's characters).

 
The purpose of this critique is not to suggest that The Truth About Charlie is a great film. It's not. But that's acceptable from a film with this kind of adventurousness and experimentation. Demme isn't feeding off the success of past thrillers. He's re-inventing the genre, even if some of his experiments aren't successful. But why hasn't the film been received, in the spirit of its experimentation? Critics have blindly dismissed its deliberate idiosyncracies, as negligent mistakes. Demme may have taken too great a risk experimenting in such a commercial framework. The current critical establishment rejects personal films as "self-indulgent" or "amateurish." In particular, critics seem to be offended by any combination of commercial and experimental methods (Steven Soderbergh's unfairly maligned Full Frontal is another recent example). In one of the few tolerable negative reviews, Rolling Stone's Peter Travers admits that "seeing a real filmmaker try and fall short is still more fun than watching a hack hit the mark." Even if the critics cited above didn't enjoy the film, you'd think they could at least echo Travers' sentiments. But few of them have. Some even suggest that Demme should retire. In their cynical, knee-jerk rush to poke holes in The Truth About Charlie, many critics have ignored the evidence that explains those "holes." More importantly, they've overlooked the film's artistry, charm, and originality.