The Kid gives particularly charming expression to the compassionate humanism that runs throughout Chaplin’s cinema. The Kid was Chaplin’s first full-length feature film as director, and if it lacks the finesse of Chaplin’s subsequent films, it makes up for that in heart. Chaplin’s immense talent for physical performance is on full display as he imbues a series of hysterical comedy set-pieces with pathos. In The Kid, Chaplin’s most iconic character, the Tramp, becomes a surrogate father to an abandoned child. The challenges they endure together are both hilarious and moving, a vision of charity given from one outcast to another.
—Ryan Holt