We've always talked about something going wrong with The Bomb...the Bomb, Dmitri, the Hydrogen Bomb!

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2000)

First, let me begin my comment/review with a side-note(It's My comment, after all!). I am currently 14 and am in junior high/middle school. That means I'm in the "target audience" of the likes of "American Pie"(I haven't seen this and I don't want to). Now that I've said that, this is the funniest film ever conceived! The plot? General Jack Ripper (named after a serial killer of prostitutes) goes a little funny in the head and does a silly thing..he orders a wing of 34 planes to attack Russia. Naturally the Premier is, err, upset. His Executive Officer, Lionel Mandrake( I can't recall what this means now, but I know this is a double entendre!) is one of the few sane characters in this and the only man who can stop the bombers before the plaster Russia. In the War Room, President Merkin Muffley tries the sort the mess out with Dmitri Kissof on the hot-line. General Buck Turgison strongly believes that we should immediately conduct a full scale nuclear strike against Russia to cripple their defenses. When Muffley declares that this is mass murder, Turgison replies "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, I am sayin that there will be no more than 10 to 20 million dead..tops..depending on the breaks!". The rest is a hilarious tour de farce as Mandrake, Muffley, The Russian Ambassador Alexei Da Sadeski, Kissof, The People's Central Air Defence Headquarters, and the rest of the world tries to stop the planes. What makes this film so good? "Austin Powers" dealt with global destruction, right? I'm too young to remember, but this film was made just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when everyone was worried that the other side would do a silly thing and start a nuclear war. The jokes are great. I must say that the sight gags are witty, instead of tired slapstick. For example, when Group Captain Mandrake is trying to put a call through to the Pentagon and demands that Colonel Guano shoot the lock off of a Coca-Cola machine and find some change, he replies "That's private property" and "I'll get you your change but if you can't reach the President you'll have to answer to the Coca-Cola company!". After he shoots the lock off with a bullet, soda splashes all over his face. There are several others I won't disclose. The bomb ride with Major King is the most memorable moment in cinema history. The film sticks true to its conviction: Nuclear war is absurd!. I'm certain that today's filmmakers would have had the Doomsday Machine not go off. Another plus is that acting is top notch. If only Myers could act anything like Sellers I would have nominated Austin Powers to the AFI! Did anybody notice that everyone was panicking except Major Kong and his boys who were just about to end civilization, who are eating sandwiches and reading Playboy? The fact that Kong is wearing a ten gallon hat as he about to go into nuclear combat toe-to-toe and is determined to bomb something if it's the last he literally does just makes a perfect film only better.(Spoiler?) This is a film that has to be seen again and again if only for the "We'll Meet Again" as the world explodes!