Lost some relevance, but it holds up

Rating: 6/10 (13 July 2012)

This movie used to be one of the most caustic satires ever captured on celluloid, which kinda shows how far the limits have moved since the 60s. Don't get me wrong, I do of course understand people took offense to this. Mocking nuclear warfare in the middle of the Cold War is daring no matter how you look at it, and furthermore it creates a thoroughly bitter-sweet atmosphere only paralleled in Chaplin's "The Great Dictator". But when it comes to the actual execution of the idea, the whole thing is sorta goodie two shoes by today's standards. Only Peter Sellers really manages to get in your face from time to time, and that's mainly because most of his material is improvised. The actual script seems pretty well thought-out and balanced, but the dialogues often just lack zest. Occasionally there's a decent one-liner in there ("There will be no fighting in the war room!"), but often the scenes just serve purely as exposition and go on way longer than they need to. Still, the movie seems to pick up steam around halfway and leads you to an absolutely hysterical ending that makes it all worth it. Not Kubrick's best, but far from bad.