After so many biopics about the lives of American show biz legends (Beyond The Sea, De-Lovely, Ray), it's refreshing to see the life of an English entertainer on screen. But this HBO/BBC co-production is a mixed bag. It's fascinating to compare this film to Terry Johnson's NOT ONLY BUT ALWAYS, a TV movie for Britain's Channel Four which aired in December 2004. That dealt with the lives of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, was also set in the 60s and 70s and even has an actor playing Blake Edwards! On balance, I'd say the Channel 4 movie was the better of the two for being the less pretentious and dramatically better sustained.
In 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers', the acting is splendid. Geoffrey Rush gives the performance of his career as Sellers. Aided by some great make-up work, in the 1970s sequences he looks spookily like the real Sellers. Emily Watson and Miriam Margolyes are both convincing in the roles of first wife and mother. Charlize Theron fares less well in the under-written role of Britt Ekland (she doesn't really have much dialogue).
The other strength is Norman Garwood's production design which fully captures the period of the drab post-war London of the 1950s through to the brightly-coloured affluence of the Swinging Sixties. He even recreates Ken Adam's war room from DR STRANGELOVE (apparently, according to the DVD commentary, on the same Shepperton Studios sound stage where the real DR STRANGELOVE was filmed).
It also has one of the best title sequences of any movie I've seen: an animated sequence full of cartoon Sellerses, giving way to a recreation of a recording of the Goon show in the 1950s.
However, the fatal flaw is the screenplay by Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeeley. They use a cumbersome device of having Rush also play the other characters in the movie (his mother, his dad, Anne Sellers, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards) off set. The intention is to create the impression of a life of Peter Sellers done in the style of a Peter Sellers film with him playing all the main parts. In the deleted scenes section of the DVD there's even more sequences of him playing his mother again, the doctor who saves his life, a Hollywood producer and movie executive, and the Stephen Fry character, Maurice Woodruff. The effect is merely to alienate the audience from the story rather than involve them. They also omit his friendship with Spike Milligan, which was important in Sellers life.
The final section of the movie seems patchy and not very interesting and the whole thing just winds down to Sellers standing alone in the snow. It gives the impression of Sellers being all alone in his final years. It is best watched on DVD where you access key deleted scenes of Sellers fourth marriage to Lynn Frederick at the time. I'm not sure why they were cut from the finished movie.
In 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers', the acting is splendid. Geoffrey Rush gives the performance of his career as Sellers. Aided by some great make-up work, in the 1970s sequences he looks spookily like the real Sellers. Emily Watson and Miriam Margolyes are both convincing in the roles of first wife and mother. Charlize Theron fares less well in the under-written role of Britt Ekland (she doesn't really have much dialogue).
The other strength is Norman Garwood's production design which fully captures the period of the drab post-war London of the 1950s through to the brightly-coloured affluence of the Swinging Sixties. He even recreates Ken Adam's war room from DR STRANGELOVE (apparently, according to the DVD commentary, on the same Shepperton Studios sound stage where the real DR STRANGELOVE was filmed).
It also has one of the best title sequences of any movie I've seen: an animated sequence full of cartoon Sellerses, giving way to a recreation of a recording of the Goon show in the 1950s.
However, the fatal flaw is the screenplay by Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeeley. They use a cumbersome device of having Rush also play the other characters in the movie (his mother, his dad, Anne Sellers, Stanley Kubrick, Blake Edwards) off set. The intention is to create the impression of a life of Peter Sellers done in the style of a Peter Sellers film with him playing all the main parts. In the deleted scenes section of the DVD there's even more sequences of him playing his mother again, the doctor who saves his life, a Hollywood producer and movie executive, and the Stephen Fry character, Maurice Woodruff. The effect is merely to alienate the audience from the story rather than involve them. They also omit his friendship with Spike Milligan, which was important in Sellers life.
The final section of the movie seems patchy and not very interesting and the whole thing just winds down to Sellers standing alone in the snow. It gives the impression of Sellers being all alone in his final years. It is best watched on DVD where you access key deleted scenes of Sellers fourth marriage to Lynn Frederick at the time. I'm not sure why they were cut from the finished movie.