Eh, that's pretty cute I guess, but nothing else . . .

Rating: 10/10 (12 December 2008)

In the sad little world of close-minded people who sip fine wine as they watch "films" but never "movies", Dr. Strangelove is a timeless classic. To the rest of the world (who actually have friends and watch "movies"), Dr. Strangelove is nothing more than a somewhat amusing movie, and that's it. I think Kubrick himself never intended it to be anything but the latter.
I don't judge movies on their importance to cinema. If I did, any movie over fifty-years-old would have to earn a perfect score, despite what I actually thought of it. I think that is a cheap, dishonest way of reviewing. With that said, I am a fan of Kubrick, and I still found little in Dr. Strangelove that was worth viewing. The actually humorous moments are few and far between, and are almost always dry jokes that would make your grandfather laugh, but do nothing to the generation desensitized by American Pie and Superbad. Maybe Dr. Strangelove is simply a generational movie, which I could understand. I don't expect the next generation to love the same movies I love now.
So what makes this movie deserve the score I'm giving it? For one, the boring factor. The movie is an hour and a half, but it felt more like five. Scenes drag on to the point of ridiculousness, trying, I assume, to flesh out the paper-thin plot. There is barely enough content here to actually make a short film, much less a full-length movie. The characters all just seem like cartoon gimmicks, only there to drive the plot. The characters aren't like the characters in Pulp Fiction where they're realistically absurd, they're just absurd. And that gets old fast.
Also, there is nothing here that other war parodies haven't done before it and done better. The only difference here is that this one has a big-name director, whereas the others didn't. You've seen most of these jokes before countless times. Even the ones you haven't seen countless times are smile-worthy at most.
The "genius" of making a parody where we march happily to our own execution is really nothing special either. What else is there for a war parody to do? It takes little imagination whatsoever, even for 1964. Political cartoons did it years upon years before that date. That's why when I say there is very little, if anything, truly original or creative about Dr. Strangelove, it's overshadowed by the countless parody clichés. Does that mean it's less amusing? Yes. When you hear a joke more than once, it's hard to laugh at it again.
Overall, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is just a Disney cartoon done in like action with a prolific director at the help. Nothing more. Nothing less. The hype is absolutely ridicules, and I don't care how many "not helpful" votes I get for this. Someone needs to realize these pretentious "classics" aren't classics at all. They're boring, pretentious English essays with little to differentiate them from the countless others just like them.
Stanley Kubrick did much more important works in his lifetime than this.
3/10