As a huge Peter Sellers fan, I came into this movie with high expectations. I grew up on the Pink Panther movies, and even to this day, they continue to prompt uproarious laughter. The man was a genius, and combined with the genius of Stanley Kubrick, I figured the genius would be overflowing, the laughs unstoppable. In short, there was a lot of genius, and plenty of tongue-in-cheek content, but almost no laughs at all.
Make no mistake, the acting was brilliant. I had to do a triple take to realize that Sellers was playing all three main characters, a set of performances pulled off so well as to rightfully deserve the nods of the Academy, especially as the president, whose straightforward approach contrasted heavily with Sellers' more flamboyant roles (see A Shot in the Dark or Murder by Death), yet was actually one of the funniest in the film. Nonetheless, considering his mad, titular character only showed up in two scenes, I felt a lot like I did watching the original Pink Panther, the first in the Clouseau series, a bit bored and let down.
Humor aside, the brilliance of the film resides in its critique of the military chain of command, especially the question of what happens when a link in that chain gets rusty. The theme also appears in another of Kubrick's more famous works, Paths of Glory, which deals with the need for a scapegoat and the inability of the lower echelons to prevent their superiors from executing innocent men. These themes serve as reminders that joining the military is not a foolproof path to glory, as the scenes of Americans following orders to shoot other Americans demonstrate.
All in all, in terms of whether I would watch Dr. Strangelove again, I have to give it three stars. It dragged at times, and I was underwhelmed by the brand of humor, which may have been too consistently subtle for my taste or perhaps, dated.
Make no mistake, the acting was brilliant. I had to do a triple take to realize that Sellers was playing all three main characters, a set of performances pulled off so well as to rightfully deserve the nods of the Academy, especially as the president, whose straightforward approach contrasted heavily with Sellers' more flamboyant roles (see A Shot in the Dark or Murder by Death), yet was actually one of the funniest in the film. Nonetheless, considering his mad, titular character only showed up in two scenes, I felt a lot like I did watching the original Pink Panther, the first in the Clouseau series, a bit bored and let down.
Humor aside, the brilliance of the film resides in its critique of the military chain of command, especially the question of what happens when a link in that chain gets rusty. The theme also appears in another of Kubrick's more famous works, Paths of Glory, which deals with the need for a scapegoat and the inability of the lower echelons to prevent their superiors from executing innocent men. These themes serve as reminders that joining the military is not a foolproof path to glory, as the scenes of Americans following orders to shoot other Americans demonstrate.
All in all, in terms of whether I would watch Dr. Strangelove again, I have to give it three stars. It dragged at times, and I was underwhelmed by the brand of humor, which may have been too consistently subtle for my taste or perhaps, dated.
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