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!

Peter Sellers holds a perennial place amongst the greatest actors of our time, rivaling only Charles Chaplin in his ability to portray the human comedy as vividly and as hysterically as possible without relieving his character from being true and connecting with the audience. So it's no surprise that Stephen Hawkins decided to make a biopic about his work. And who should he chose to portray the famous, iconic late Peter Sellers? None other than Geoffrey Rush, a masterful actor who, besides being able to imitate Sellers extraordinarily, looks like Sellers a great deal too.Like any biopic, the film follows our lead character Peter Sellers as he progresses from being a simple radio voice-over in funny ads to a big screen international sensation, and along the way, the film digs deep into Sellers' subconscious (as it were), ergo revealing the so-called "truth" behind the polyphacetic actor who revealed a great many personalities unto the world but chose to hide his own.Geoffrey Rush is, of course, perfect in his role. I mean, you should see him do Dr. Strangelove or Inspector Clousseau. He's hysterical! And even if he's not imitating Sellers to a tee, he really does channel Sellers body and soul, giving what I believe to be one of his best performances. We see how Sellers was lovingly bred by a materialist mother (Miriam Margolyes) who taught him to 'climb high', grasp success and shun anything that may come between him and his limelight- whether it be his wife (Emily Watson, in a perfectly-played role too), his kids or his sanity.Although...when it comes to sanity per se, I can't be sure Sellers himself was "sane", with the full meaning of the word. You see him as an overgrown child, impersonating each and every one of his meaningful acquaintances, and merging with the fictional characters he's played before to a point where we discover the "true" Sellers doesn't have a personality, but merely adapts.The film is not funny by itself (why, I may even go as far as declaring it to be dramatic entirely), but it rather absorbs its comedy from Sellers' most memorable comedy performances. And it gives us a nice behind-the-scenes look at how he worked closely with Hollywood's greatest directors, such as Blake Edwards and Stanley Kubrick.This is, on the whole, a fun film to peruse. It's no "Ray" or "Walk the Line", but it is refreshing and quite interesting. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a biopic about an A-list star who possibly had multiple personality disorder? Rating: 3 stars out of 4!!

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

'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' is quite an insightful film about the life of the great Sellers. It does not document every single fact about his life (I doubt any biopic can within a two or three hour time limit) and there are some discrepancies (e.g. time frame) but it does show the price he paid to achieve his state of greatness. In a way the man was obsessed with becoming a big star but at the same time he wanted to do his own thing. He wanted to be a star on his own term, doing his own thing but he failed to balance his work and personal life and this had a severe toll on his family. He became a self-centred bastard, cruel to everyone who was close to him yet he longed for their contact, especially Peg and Anne, and missed his children. Stephen Hopkins does a remarkable job by putting the story together on screen infusing it with intensity and humour. Geoffrey Rush does a phenomenal job playing Sellers (that too so accurately) and bringing him to life on screen. In addition, there is a strong physical resemblance and the way he captures Sellers's various characters and body language is particularly notable. Of the supporting cast, Emily Watson, Charlize Theron and Miriam Margolyes are excellent while John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci are quite adequate.'The Life and Death of Peter Sellers' is a well-crafted movie and an effective (although not 100% accurate) portrayal of the tragic life of a great comedian and a great actor. The numerous references and imitations done so wonderfully by Rush serve as a wonderful tribute. But, I felt that two hours was not enough to explain the enigma of this man. We don't see anything about his life before movies. All we know is that he was a 'radio actor' and thus we never really get to the root of his unstable tortured personality.