You Can't Fight in Here! This is the War Room!

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2005)

Just about everything in this brilliant satire of Cold War politics is perfect. Kubrick created his first template masterpiece with this hilarious comedy that sees military bureaucracy as a comedy of errors and a hot-line conversation between the President of the US and the Premier of the USSR as a snippy fit between quasi-lovers. You have everything you could ever want here: great dialogue, fantastic acting, flawless directing, cool sets, and timely political farce (that could still ring true today in this age of Bush America, Institutionalized Fear, and the War on Terror).
Everyone deservedly raves about Peter Sellers in his multiple roles (as Mandrake, the President, and Dr. Strangelove), but I dare you to find a funnier performance than that of George C. Scott as the slapdash over-zealous General "Buck" Turgidson, especially when he falls over backwards in the War Room and gets up and continues his speech without missing a beat. Also of note is Sterling Hayden as Jack D. Ripper. His riffs on the purity of essence, bodily fluids, and Communist infiltration through fluoridation are laugh-out-loud funny. With characters like Colonel "Bat" Guano, and Slim Pickens' Major Kong, great scenes naturally flow forth, and Kubrick's one take on pure comedy is simply genius. He was wise never to touch the genre again fully (although "A Clockwork Orange" will always be a comedy in my book), as he made the perfect example of the form here.