How I Learned to Love Dr. Strangelove

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2001)

(The following may contain spoilers, read at your own risk.)
While the manifest content of Dr. Strangelove is about nuclear war, it's also an interesting social commentary rife with satire and tongue-in-cheek humour.
The "comedy" is obvious in some of the characters names: Jack D. Ripper and Amabassador Kissoff as well as several ironic visual cues: (signs around the US Army Base) "Peace is Our Profession" and "Civil Defense is your mission". The dialogue is also replete with double entendres and irony.
President Merkin Muffley to General Buck Turgidson: "You can't fight in here, this is the War Room"
And, a clueless Colonel Guano to (Seller's) Captain Mandrake during an exigency to "unlawfully" obtain coins from a vending machine. (The change is required to place a phone call to the President to stop the impending nuclear holocaust):
"Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if 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."
I'm not generally impressed with performances in comedies, but Sellers had the daunting task of playing a trio of characters, and pulled it off amazingly well! His performance as Dr. Strangelove was deliciously funny as he was constantly beating down his wayward and uncontrollable right hand. Hmm, what is Kubrick trying to say, that in the Army, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing?