Saturday, February 18, 2006

Biography of a Chameleon

by Stephen Hopkins

The idea behind The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is great in that you can view Sellers’ life through the prism of the many roles that he has played. With acting roles as the framework and with a courageous performance by Geoffrey Rush, it’s a film that’s worth seeing. But while there are some fun technical touches and clever parts where Sellers is playing just about every character that shows up at some point, it starts to sag under the weight of the clever device. Maybe I’d like it more if I hadn’t seen something like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind which is a much more courageous film, but it had the benefit of the story being outlined by the main character himself. With The Life and Death of Peter Sellers it reminded me more of the films it referred to than giving a glimpse into the reasons for the remarkable acting skill of Peter Sellers.

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