A biting political satire, and a nightmarishly dark comedy!

Rating: 9/10 (2 February 2005)

Some times, the only way that we can cope with the horrors of the world we live in is to laugh in defiance of them. Stanley Kubrick looks directly into the eye of the Cold War; the paranoia, the fear, the tension, the politics of major world powers gone mad, with the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance, and he snickers! Kubrick accomplished the impossible in 1963...He made the world laugh at the nuclear bomb. He didn't do it by sugar-coating anything, in fact, he did the exact opposite, painting a pointedly dark and satirical portrait of the powers that be. This portrait, too accurate not to fear, yet too accurate not to laugh at hysterically, resembles a group of little boys comparing the quality of their toys. The insanity of The Cold War is exposed, almost to the point of violation. There are clowns deciding the fate of the world, and human lives are nothing more than statistics, yet through Kubrick's lens, we find humor in the tragedy! We see how ridiculous it all is. An army general manipulates a complex Cold War strategy in order to start a nuclear war with the Russians because he blames fluoridation for his impotence. It sounds preposterous, and it is, but anyone who follows politics knows that the crazier things appear, the more realistic they usually are. The manic performances of Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens, and even Sterling Haden's twisted Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper provide the life to this story, which speaks so often of an ultimate doom. Peter Sellers plays three parts - Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, President Merkin Muffley, and the mad genius, Dr. Strangelove. The President is Sellers playing it straight, while Mandrake shows a little more of Sellers' eccentricity, but it is in Strangelove that he goes completely over the top. Speaking of over the top, George C. Scott gives an incredible energy to his roll as General "Buck" Turgidson. Scott later admitted that this was his own personal favorite performance. Slim Pickens basically plays himself as the gung-ho Major T.J. "King" Kong, who caps off the film in one of the most famous scenes in modern movie history. The satire is powerful, the humor dark, and the end result - remarkable. The detail that went into the War Room and the interior of the aircraft is amazing. The fact that Kubrick could produce a comedy as hysterical as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is testimony to his far-reaching genius, and another example of the classics that have come together to form his legacy! A must-see!