Goatius's Full Review: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying...
Stanley Kubrick’s biting anti-Cold War satire is one the best and funniest movies ever made. The stellar cast provides the film’s loony moments with a kind of dignity rarely seen in comedies. The script, hands down one of the best ever written, deals with the threat of nuclear war as merely a game that no one involved fully understands.
Peter Sellers is fantastic, playing three roles in the film: U.S. President Muffley, Royal Air Force officer Mandrake, and the titular German physicist who only appears in the latter half of the movie, confined to a wheelchair. Sellers was also supposed to play the bomber leader Major Kong, but pulled out due to the strain of already doing three characters with different accents, and not having an easy time with Kong’s southern drawl. This role ended up being played by the incomparable Slim Pickins, who does wonderfully. Sellers is hilarious in his parts, making them completely different from one another, not only by their speech patterns, but in how they walk, look, and react to the goings on. Tim Burton half paid homage and half ripped off this concept in having Jack Nicholson play the president and a Las Vegas casino owner in Mars Attacks, with mixed results.
The supporting cast is equally fine-tuned, with Sterling Hayden and George C. Scott standing out as fanatical army officials both after the same basic goal, destroying Russia. Hayden in his calm insanity and Scott in his high-strung explosiveness present the flip sides to the same coin as they both strive to victory, one out of offensiveness, the other to prevent retaliation. It’s an interesting comparison to be aware of when viewing the film.
Kubrick is at his best in this, his only true comedy. For all the wonder of 2001, the grim future society of Clockwork Orange, and the pure hell that is war in Full Metal Jacket, none manage to say as much as Strangelove. It is a film that skewers foreign policy, the Cold War, governmental procedures, and the fluoridation of water equally well and with hilarious consequences. The final destruction of the world sequence set to the song “We’ll Meet Again” is a classic, much like the marvelous film itself.
Kubrick's black comedy focuses on an American president, played by Sellers in one of his three roles, who must contend with a Soviet nuclear attack on...More at HotMovieSale.com
Stanley Kubrick s classic black comedy about a group of war-eager military men who plan a nuclear apocalypse is both funny and frightening - and seems...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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