jubilee77
The life and death of Peter Sellers was a film based on the controversial biography by Roger Lewis of the same name about a comic genius whom had an ability to deliver comedy film at its best. His best known roles so far was the inept French detective in the series of Pink Panther films as Inspector Clouseau.Yet despite his achievements in comedy roles, Sellers had actually ended up as a sad, lonely and tragic figure plagued by heart trouble, marital and personality issues that many years after his death, there had been some debate that he may have been suffering from some form of personality disorders.The film has some excellent and sometimes very brief insights plus some historical errors from time after time on the main character and the Australian Geoffrey Rush unexpectedly delivers superb performances starring as Sellers both on and off-screen together with some of Sellers' own starring roles and its hard to fault plus some of the makeups and makeovers as Sellers' off-screen lifestyle had gradually taken its toll towards the end of his life.
MartinHafer
I love Peter Sellers movies and have seen just about all of them that are available--even his really crappy ones (and he made quite a few--especially later in his career). I loved his abilities and characterizations...but I also realize that he was a horrid person off the set...absolutely horrid. So although I was very curious to watch this made for HBO film, I also didn't see a whole lot to surprise me or make me glad I saw it. I already knew he was depressed, angry, insecure and a terrible husband...so why did I watch it, then?! And I think this will be the reaction of many people who are acquainted with the real-life Sellers. And that is the shortcoming of the film--there are no surprises or new insights into this enigmatic man. Also, the film was awfully episodic as it seemed to bounce around too much and would be hard to follow unless you are very familiar with his career. What you are left with is a marvelous performance by Geoffery Rush (for which he deserved and won the Golden Globe) and a high quality production all around. You really can't blame the people who made the film--they seemed to try their best. So I'd sum it all up by saying it was exceptionally well made but not really necessary for most viewers to see it nor is it much fun to watch. It seems to be the sad story of a pathetic jerk and perhaps its best value is as an object lesson to us all.
Gordon-11
This film is about the private life and public life of the famous film actor, Peter Sellers.Geoffrey Rush does a good job impersonating Peter Sellers. It's a challenging role, as it requires him to take up the identity of Pete Sellers and also Peter Sellers' film roles. I am particularly impressed by the scene on the plane, where he acts like the detective from Pink Panther. It is also interesting that "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" portrays him as a rather unsympathetic, rude, impulsive and emotionally labile person. There is no sugar coating to make him glamorous. Peter Sellers' character portrayal is very good. It makes me dislike this character for his tyrannical ways, and for him throwing his life away through irresponsible choices.
James Hitchcock
Many film-star biopics suffer from the drawback of being bland and excessively reverential. "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers", fortunately, is an exception, perhaps because it would be difficult to be excessively reverent about Peter Sellers, at least about Sellers the man rather than Sellers the actor. The film follows both his private life and his professional life from the 1950s, when he first came to prominence in as a comedian in the British radio programme "The Goon Show", to his death in 1980.Although he had acted in some of the best British comedies of the fifties (such as "The Ladykillers", "I'm All Right, Jack", and "The Mouse that Roared"), it was in the sixties that Sellers enjoyed his greatest international success, based largely on his ability to master a range of different accents and comic voices. Although he had major roles in Stanley Kubrick's two great films "Lolita" and "Dr Strangelove", most people today would associate his name with the Pink Panther series, in which he played the terminally incompetent French detective Inspector Clouseau. It is strange to think that Clouseau was originally only a minor character and that Sellers was only offered the part after Peter Ustinov turned it down. The original film was conceived as a vehicle for David Niven, but the sequels turned into Sellers vehicles when his performance greatly impressed director Blake Edwards.The seventies saw Sellers' career in decline; few of his films enjoyed any success, other than increasingly derivative "Pink Panther" sequels. He did, however, enjoy one final critical triumph for "Being There", based on a story by Jerzy Kosinski, which allowed him to show his skills as a dramatic as opposed to a comic actor and which earned him an Oscar nomination. This was his penultimate film and appeared a year before his death.One remark of Sellers that is given much prominence in the film was that his personality, the "real me behind the masks", had been "surgically removed". This idea may explain the importance of "Being There" for Sellers as the main character, Chance, with whom he identified, is a simpleton who is effectively a blank mask, a man who is seen by others as whatever they want him to be. Yet this idea of Sellers as a man without a personality of his own is not really borne out by the film. It might be more accurate to say that he was a man who looked at his personality, did not like what he saw, and wished that it had been surgically removed.The film shows Sellers as a childish, petulant man, much given to tantrums and emotionally over-dependent on his possessive mother Peg. He also relied heavily on the advice of a clairvoyant named Maurice Woodruff, here portrayed by Stephen Fry as something of a charlatan. He seems to have had difficulty in distinguishing fantasy from reality, remaining in character as Clouseau or Strangelove even when off screen. His marriage to his long-suffering first wife Anne Howe seems to have broken down when he "confessed" to an affair with Sophia Loren (his co-star in "The Millionairess") which never existed outside his imagination. His second marriage to the beautiful Swedish actress Britt Ekland seems to have been happy at first, but quickly deteriorated and ended in domestic violence. According to the film, the cause of the rupture was that she wanted children and he did not, as his relationship with the children of his first marriage was always a difficult one.Rather surprisingly, the film omits details of Sellers' two subsequent marriages, although I would have thought that his final marriage to Lynne Frederick would have provided the film-makers with plenty of material. Frederick, who was much younger than her husband, was often depicted in the media as a greedy, hypocritical gold-digger, a characterisation which might have fitted well with the film's view of Sellers as a self-deluding fantasist.The film's main strength is the performance from Geoffrey Rush in the title role. Although there is little physical resemblance between the two men, and although, at 53, Rush was considerably older than the character he was playing except for the final scenes, he is incredibly convincing. At times it almost seems as though the real Peter Sellers has been brought back to life. Although Rush is perhaps best known as the fictional pirate captain in "Pirates of the Caribbean", he seems to be at his best playing real-life individuals; he was also very good as Walsingham in the two "Elizabeth" films and brilliant as David Helfgott in "Shine". Most of the other roles are little more than cameos, but one exception is the fine contribution from Emily Watson as Anne Howe.I would not rate this film quite as highly as the deeply moving "Shine"; Peter Sellers was such a difficult, self-destructive character that, however good Rush is, one is never really moved by what happens to him. Nevertheless, this is a fine biography of a man who, whatever his faults, was at his best a very fine actor. 8/10
