It may not have been a crime that shook the world, but it sickened it nonetheless. A few months after Charlie Chaplin died on Christmas Day 1977, his coffin was dug up and held for ransom. Almost forty years later what was once a cause of revulsion has, in the mind of French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois, become a tale of comic potential. If so, it is potential unfulfilled in his film The Price of Fame.

Thankfully, any attempt to duplicate Weekend at Bernie’s is avoided, as Chaplin’s remains remain in his coffin. Instead, comedy is prised out of criminal’s bungling attempts to extort money from the grieving family. Belgian comic Benoît Poelvoorde stars as Eddy, whose release from prison coincides with Chaplin’s death. In an effort to help his friend pay for his wife’s operation, Eddy suggests they ‘borrow’ Chaplin’s body. After all, he reasons, the little tramp was a friend of the homeless, the immigrant and the poor. As the two  criminals fall into all three categories, Chaplin surely wouldn’t mind helping them out.

He certainly could have been of some assistance to the filmmakers. Beauvois use of silence seems less of a homage and more like the desperate padding out of a thin story. The soundtrack is jarring, the storyline is meandering and when all seems lost, a circus is thrown in for good measure.

As for Peter Coyote’s performance as Chaplin’s former butler, his attempts at adding gravitas to proceedings is unintentionally the most laughable aspect of the film.