The Life and Death of Peter Sellers
If you're going to make a biopic, the subject should be interesting enough on his or her own without having to resort to gimmickry and melodrama. Apparently director Hopkins wasn't convinced that Sellers' brilliant gift for characterization and vast insecurity about that gift was enough. The dizzying array of spoiled-brat temper tantrums and cheap cinematic tricks in the first act ruin all of the would-be insight into Sellers' various neuroses, and the movie never recovers from it. Geoffrey Rush's excellent mimicry of Sellers' many movie characters, while playing off the notion that Sellers himself was never sure of who exactly he was, is the only thing that works. But one good performance in the midst of all this rambling Sturm und Drang can't save this film from feeling like a really expensive TV movie-of-the-week.
- April 10, 2005
DVD Extras
There are eight deleted scenes of inconsequence and a "making of" featurette—so nothing much at all. It also has commentary tracks by Geoffrey Rush and Stephen Hopkins and another by writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, in which I doubt anyone explains this mess.