Member review

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb is a satirical comedy by the infamous Stanley Kubrick ( 'A Clockwork Orange') starring Petter Sellers ('The Pink Panther') and George C. scott ('The Hustler'). It Aims to tackle and poke fun at the the issue of the Cold War and the potential threat of a nuclear war that came with it. Before this, Kubrick had mostly dabbled in film noir and documentaries so it seemed a strange choice for him to suddenly branch out into comedy; This is reinforced by the fact that the original screenplay was based of the novel 'Red Alert' which had a much darker tone and it wasn't until Kubrick was reading the script back that he realised some of it, in his eyes, had the potential to be quite funny. 50 or so years later, people are still getting their ribs tickled by this intriguing piece. I struggled to see why.

The front man, Peter sellers, cost half this movies budget (perhaps why he had to play three characters). I enjoyed his performance as President Merkin Muffley the most as it was far less over acted than the other two and had the most amusing lines, but this did not make up for his quite frankly boring portrayal of Lionel Mandrake, the retired RAF pilot and his viscously over acted performance of Dr. Strangelove.

His depiction of the title character was pantomime-esk. I maybe would have found it funny at the age of about 7. Oh no I wouldn't! To be fair to Peter, this may not have been his fault as George C Scott did complain about how Kubrick made him over act and said he'd never work with him again. At least George's character seemed like a real person you'd meet in a war room and not some ridiculous german scientist. This film should have been named after General Turgidson as he appears in a much larger portion of the film than Dr.Strangelove.

As for the story I didn't think it was Bad I just don't think it had the impact it perhaps would have had if I'd lived through the cold war. Despite this, some of it's messages may still be relevant today with the whole North korea situation and the America's Gung-Ho attitude. Do not mistake this for me saying this film is timeless. It was very, very dated with that 60s/70s 'Fawlty Towers' style humour. Which is ironic because Kubrick has said he uses classical music in his films to stop them from getting stuck in the period they were made. I did however enjoy the three intertwining character groups with Slim Pickins and his gang up in the sky gliding along to "When Johnny Came Marching Home" oblivious to the total mess that's going down on the ground in the war room due to a communication error whilst we simultaneously see the man who initiated this whole thing rambling on about precious bodily fluids. This style of story telling was reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction'.

There were other redeeming factors like the phone call between the president and the Premier of Russia which I actually found quite funny and the sets were phenomenal for their time with the incredibly iconic war room being the stand out one. The editing was also innovative and creative especially the scene in cockpit with all the sharp zooming in to to the switches after each one has been flipped which reminded me of some of Edgar Wright's work. However the film still bombed for me. The acting was embarrassing, the plot and message behind it were dated which meant the film just didn't have the desired impact on me. The humour was also not to my taste and i felt it was quite childish despite dealing with quite a serious issue. (Thankfully Kubrick didn't put that custard pie fight in at the end like he originally planned.) Combine this with slow pacing and far too much dialogue and you've got a film that doesn't stand the test of time and fails to create any kind of suspense or reason for the viewer to cling on until the end.