Overrated

Rating: 5/10 (14 March 2015)

Q: How do you know if there's a fighter pilot at a dinner party? A: He'll tell you.
Q: How do you know "Dr. Strangelove" is a brilliant work of comedic genius? A: The Makers will tell you.
Good performances by Keenan Wynn and Slim Pickens (in the role of a lifetime) highlight this overrated comedy by director Stanley Kubrick.
Set in the left-wing la-la land where America is always the aggressor, amid them bombing of the USSR to forestall the communist plot to fluoridate water by a kooky general (named Jack D. Ripper, with all the smugness this movie thinks is subtle; another man is named "Bat" Guano. Ha-ha. That name might have come from the odor wafting over the script).
The script has the condescending superiority of someone who knows they are cleverer than anyone else in the room (whether they are or not).
The real saving grace in this movie is Peter Sellers, who essays three performances (and it would have been four but, depending on whom you believe, he either couldn't get the voice down or he hurt his ankle, poor baby).
Sellers is brilliant as the ineffectual (probably Democrat, since it was made under JFK) US president and as an English officer. His other great character, Mandrake, is really too good for this movie, and proves Sellers could act and was not just a brilliant mimic. On the other side of the scale, Sellers shamelessly hams it up as the bizarre former Nazi Doctor Strangelove, who only comes in at the end of the film. In the overacting category he is neck and neck with George C. Scott, who is probably terrified of being upstaged. But while Scott was a good actor when he had good material, nobody can overact with Sellers' aplomb.
The movie's glorious black and white gives it a documentary feel that is effective in getting across what little comedy actually works. For instance, the line (SPOILER): "(I)f you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? . . . You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."
It's too bad the movie isn't just Sellers and Wynn exchanging side-splitting barbs. The viewer also gets to see people getting squirted in the face with soft drink and generals flopping around a "war room" in ways that would have suited the dumber movies of Jim Carrey.
Word has it Kubrik either filmed, or wanted to film, a gargantuan pie-fight at the end. Cutting it out was at least one good decision he made, besides the b-&-w, though you get a glimpse of pastry early on and it sends chills down your spine.
I believe nothing is above being made fun of. I especially love "black" comedy like "The Wrong Box" and "The Assassination Bureau" where death is treated cavalierly. And the sad thing is, this overrated piece is probably the best thing Kubrik ever shot.