The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

One of my all time favorites.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Blistering performances.

Biographical movies are always an interesting combination of reality and fiction. You can't tell the story with absolute truth, so you do your best to give the flavour. And here the idea is to give the flavour of the mass of insecurities and contradictions that was Peter Sellers.Let me say that the film is a very clever movie - well structured, well written, and imaginatively designed and directed in an alluring combination of historical reconstruction and surreal meta-reality.And then let me go on to say that Geoffrey Rush is absolutely superb (not that the rest of the cast isn't, but Rush does stand out). He is Peter Sellers. And his performance is so good that you will be astonished, as I still am, at how much a man who looks nothing like Peter Sellers looks so much like him - I think it is all in the performance.Brilliant.

Peter Sellers, the late English comic actor, was one heck of a performer. 'The Party', 'The Pink Panther series', oh, what memories of good-cinema. 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' is a biopic on this late icon, which is indeed a fine film to watch. Directed by Stephen Hopkins, this biopic also packs in tremendous performances, brilliant cinematography and slick editing. 'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' is a superb journey, of a man, who made the entire world laugh, but within, was a spoiled-brat. His walk with life is filled with problems, loads of success, inner failure, but eventually redeems through self realization. This biopic rocks, and there are no doubts about that. Stephen Hopkins's direction is fine-framed, while Peter Levy's Cinematography & John Smith's editing, as mentioned are pitch- perfect. Performances are Tremendous: Geoffrey Rush as Peter Sellers, is natural to the core. He proves his range once again, and it's indeed time that people start putting him up into the "Cult Actors' section. John Lithgow as Blake Edwards is astonishing, and looks each bit like him. Charlize Theron as Britt Ekland and Emily Watson as Anne Sellers, are wonderful. Miriam Margolyes as Peg Sellers is good. Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick, does well. On the whole, this biopic salutes the late legend, due to it's near-perfect execution. Strongly Recommended, with Two Thumbs Up!

One can never take a biopic as the last word on a person's life, but "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" is a very good look at one of the screen's great comedians and improvisational artists.It's difficult to compress a life into a couple of hours, and as a result, certain incidents are compressed, and no less than two wives are omitted (though Sellers' last wife, Lynn Frederick, is mentioned at the end).Sellers is portrayed by Geoffrey Rush with complete brilliance. He is as much of a chameleon as Sellers himself was. Here, he is not only Sellers in private life but the film Sellers, recreating scenes in "The Pink Panther," "Casino Royale," and "Dr. Strangelove" magnificently.Director Stephen Hopkins adopts a convention of having Sellers at times play different people of his life - as if he is making a film of it - so in one scene, we see Sellers' mother, and then in the next scene, Sellers is in drag as his mother, during which time, he faces the camera and talks to the audience. In one respect, it's interesting; in another, it hits us over the head with aspects of Sellers' personality, as Sellers takes these moments to talk about himself.The depiction of Sellers as an infantile, spoiled, tantrum-prone "empty vessel" who had fantasies of being a smooth Lothario is doubtless correct. He could be very difficult to work with and had an extremely volatile relationship with many people, including director Blake Edwards. His problems are not uncommon ones in artists. Ambitious, he started off probably happily married with a family, but his wife and children became expendable when big stardom came to him. In the end, he left each of his children the equivalent of $2,000 out of a huge estate. Under British law, this amount meant the children couldn't sue for more money. At the time of his death, he was intending to disinherit his fourth wife. She ended up getting everything, and when she died, quite young, her mother got it all. Kind of a last joke on Sellers.The supporting performances are excellent. Emily Watson does a marvelous job as Sellers' first wife Anne, who probably was closer to him than anyone else and whose photo he always carried; Charlize Theron is gorgeous as Britt Ekland, his second wife. Miriam Margolves is effective as Sellers' pampering mother, and Peter Vaughan is very sympathetic as Sellers' quiet, henpecked father, about whom Sellers had some real regrets. John Lithgow does a great job as Blake Edwards.All in all, well worth seeing for the astonishing performance of Geoffrey Rush as a sad, narcissistic man with a big talent and a massive ego, Peter Sellers.

You want a comedian to be happy. It just goes with the territory. So it's a bit jarring to watch this bio-pic of comedian and movie star Peter Sellers. Sellers was very funny and gave life to some memorable characters (most notably, I suppose, Inspector Clouseau and Dr. Strangelove) but the portrait painted here of his personal life isn't filled with laughs at all. In fact, this film paints a picture of a troubled, emotionally immature and childish man with perhaps a bit of an Oedipus Complex (certainly dominated by his mother at the very least) who isn't able to make any other relationship (even with his own children) work successfully, and who gets overwhelmed by the characters he plays to the point at which he largely loses himself in the process. Sellers wants to break loose and set aside the disguises and become known as himself, but so successful was he with the various characters that he can't get the opportunity to do that. The film moves back and forth between fantasy and reality - and appropriately so, since that's the depiction of Sellers' own life, as he struggles to maintain a grip on reality - that struggle being shown most clearly when he imagines himself in a romance with Sophia Loren, only to have her reject him out of hand when he tries to turn his fantasy into reality. His marriages to his first wife Anne (Emily Watson) and his second wife Britt Eklund (Charlize Theron) are well portrayed, as is his troubled relationship with his children, and his working relationship with director Blake Edwards (John Lithgow.) The closing captions, which reveal that his soon to be divorced fourth wife ended up inheriting almost his entire multi-million dollar estate (because he died before the divorce was final) while his children got about $2000 US each were actually very sad.I thought this was a pretty convincing portrait. I've always thought Sellers was a good actor, although he was never at the top of my list of favourite actors. This is worth watching for those with an interest in the man's life, although it will certainly remove forever the image of a happy comedian.