One Paragraph Movie Review: Dr Strangelove

One hundred and sixteenth film: Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb, featuring Peter Sellers as almost everyone and a young Darth Vader as one of the other people. I mean, obviously brilliant, and even though I’d never watched it before I feel like I’ve seen enough clips and enough rapturous praise to have justifiably expected to enjoy this movie. And I DID. It’s rare to see such overblown, melodramatic performances delivering such subtlety and gentle humour, but I guess when juxtaposed against certain global annihilation via nuclear war, anything has nuance. For something made in 1964, too, it’s genuinely upsetting how many of the themes are still menacing: a tense relationship between the US and Russia, Earth’s population being at the mercy of trigger-happy idiots, and conspiracy theorists with weapons worrying about communists and fluoridation. Just about the only thing that didn’t feel familiar was Stanley Kubrick making something funny. Four and a bit war room buffets out of five.