Film

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

In many ways this feels less like a proper movie than a pageant patched together from impersonations, some poor (Tucci's Kubrick), some passable (Theron's Britt Ekland may be the best on show), others mute and virtually invisible (Edward Tudor Pole's Milligan). Centre stage, of course, is Rush's almost oppressively virtuoso, but unilluminating, lead turn, lent wobbly support from Margoyles as Sellers' doting/domineering mother Peg. Their rhetorical flourishes cannot conceal the fact that the film as a whole is little more than a string of clichés about the shortcomings of genius: the insecurity, the infidelity, the volatility, the solipsism; in short, the pain inflicted and experienced in the pursuit of art and stardom. From the ugly opening animated credits to the silly end, this superficial, even pretentious film barely connects with its subject or the world he lived in.

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