Answering to the Coca-Cola Company...

Rating: 8/10 (21 April 2012)

The eponymous Dr. Strangelove is in fact just a minor character in the film that bears his name; and moreover, one of three characters played by Peter Sellars in Stanley Kubrick's celebrated cold war satire. And justly celebrated, because this is a very funny movie, quite aside from being a disturbingly plausible story. What it isn't so good at is maintaining an air of tension: as the countdown to nuclear oblivion takes place, it's hard to really believe in the story unfolding as anything more than a set-up for the gags, and of course the special effects are predictably rubbish by modern standards. It's arguable this is a good thing, forcing the writers to rely on their script. One particular point struck me: just how much the paranoid general reminded me of the tea-partiers in modern day America. But perhaps it's just a mark of top-class satire that it retains a feeling of pertinence, even when the mood of the times has superficially changed.