Reviews of Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Love the bomb.

Posted : 1 year, 7 months ago on 31 March 2008 10:01 (A review of Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

There is no doubt in my mind that Peter Sellers made this movie. And what a movie!

Sellers plays several characters in this film, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley and of course Dr. Strangelove. Each not only showed an amazing command of various accents, English, American and German in that order; but highlighted just exactly why Seller's was one of the greatest character actors of all time. His gestures and traits change so much between characters; you often forget it's the same man.

Strangelove is played so over the top, crazed hair style, wide eyed stares, a precise german accent and alien hand syndrome, that occassionally makes a nazi salute. This is perfectly juxtaposed by the subtle and understated way, Sellers plays the President. A quiet man, unassured and stammering; who addresses the President of Russia; as if it were his wife. Even with a looming nuclear disater, he is played down. The whole film is a master of satire; hysterically funny in places and very fun in the rest.

Kubrick, the master of controversy; makes a really unsettling case and point in this film; about our fragile position on this earth with advancements in nuclear weapons and wartime frictions. I cannot imagine how much more unsettling it would have seemed at the time; as it arrived right in the centre of the cold war.


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Brilliant satirical comedy about the Col

Posted : 3 years ago on 20 October 2006 02:48 (A review of Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

Not having grown up in the black & white era, I can't say I'm normally a fan of old classics, yet this movie compelled me. It's one of the most satirical black comedy I've ever seen, dealing with a topic that was very sensitive to people at the time; Nuclear War with the USSR.

It centres around a US General that has lost his sanity and single-handedly issues a code to all the B-52 bombers in the air to head towards their prime targets inside the USSR to drop nukes, and then commands them to shut down all communications.

The suspense builds as the US president, his top General played by a brilliantly funny George C. Scott, and the chiefs of staff, as well as the Russian ambassador, are trying everything in their power to establish communications with the planes, and failing that, to plan for full scale nuclear war.

This is quite easily Kubrick's greatest comedy, and examines the consequences if we give too much power to leaders that are all too often insane.

I highly recommend this to everyone, no matter your age. In some ways, it applies to present day warmongering of nations just as much as it did back during the Cold War era.

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