Geoffrey Rush is phenomenal as every character played by Peter Sellers in his varied career. The sad story of a man who effectively lost his personality in the characters he assumed is brought to life and it was convincing. I remember feeling sad when Sellers died, but at the same time I saw in his final TV interview that he wasn't able to express who he was. This was evoked very well by this film. It is tragic in many ways but realistic. He was a comedy genius and films like Dr Strangelove could not have been made without him. Peter Sellers' early comedies are also well worth revisiting.I enjoyed the movie and I'm glad i made the effort to see it. All the cast were wonderful and looked like the people they were playing.

Peter Sellers was a one-of-a-kind talent, so it's amazing how well Geoffrey Rush captures that magic. His recreations of chunks of Sellers performances are incredible, and he completely inhabits the character.From the movie, Sellers is not the greatest guy. He has a terrible temper, he can be petty, he cheats on his wife, and he lashes out at pretty much everyone. I've read that one of his friends felt the movie failed to capture his charm, while an ex-wife said the movie portrayed him as flawed but charming as opposed to just awful in every way. I don't know where the truth lies, although Wikipedia lists some really awful things that don't make the movie.It's interesting to see the craziness, neediness, and obsessive perfectionism of Sellers, but the movie can be a bit too gimmicky, breaking the fourth wall in a way that takes away more than it adds. I wouldn't say it's a great movie - it's really little more than a series of incidents over the years - but it's consistently engrossing and has a terrific score that includes great performances by Charlize Theron and Emily Watson.

How good was Peter Sellers? When I was an adolescent I saw a commercial for the upcoming showing of "A Shot in the Dark" (curiously, the best of the Pink Panther movies). It showed clips of Elke Sommer running around "nude" (what passed for "nude" in them days. I tuned in for Elke Sommer and quickly became obsessed with the weird character of Inspector Clouseau as limned by Peter Sellers.I became a Sellers nut, watching all his movies, collecting "Goon Show" tapes as they came on the market. But I wondered, who was this man, who had so inhabit these bizarre characters? So when THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS came out I devoured it from cover to cover.The biography THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS was a peculiar book that drew a shocking conclusion: that Peter Sellers was evil. Fortunately, Sellers is not portrayed as evil in the movie. But it does seem that Sellers, who yearned to be a leading-man type, was not the leading man even in his own life. He was a character role.The movie is hardly for Sellers neophytes. Anyone unfamiliar with Sellers' films or characters -- particularly in his early British classics like "The Ladykillers" or "Carlton-Browne of the F.O."-- might be confused by the images this flick focuses on. Yet anyone more intimately familiar with Sellers life and films might be put off by the whole.The movie starts at a point the real Sellers (probably peering over his shoulder through a fog of nostalgia) thought of as his happiest time, making the BBC-radio "Goon Show" (still repeated, still one of the funniest shows on the air). It ends with a remake (and an added bit of symbolism) of his last scene of the movie "Being There." Sandwiched in between are snippets of Sellers' selfishness and the unpleasantness he imposed on others.Whether the book or the film capture the real Sellers will never be known. Sellers famous said there was no real him -- on his "Muppet Show" appearance he said he had his "me" surgically removed. This is arrant nonsense. Sellers was all about himself. He lived a selfish life and died without being surrounded by friends and family. Apparently there was a "real" Sellers but he never acknowledged it because that person was not very nice (hilariously yet poignantly summed in this film by Sellers assuring his little daughter he still loved her, "Just not as much as I love Sophia Loren" (Loren to this day admits to an affair and I think, like the book and movie has it, it was "all in the mind."The most important question for this movie is, how does Geoffrey Rush come across as Sellers? In some scenes, Rush bears an almost frightening resemblance to pictures of the real Sellers. And he is uncannily able to recreate some of Sellers' film performances. Personally, I would like to have seen more time spent on Sellers' films (particularly "Casino Royale," which the book claims Sellers destroyed, and which ultimately, in a nice bit of karma, almost destroyed Sellers' career).In the end, however, while a brilliant actor like Rush may imitate Sellers' creations to an alarming degree, and while Rush is himself hilarious in some of his own parts, he cannot duplicate the comedic genius that was Sellers on film. He can look eerily like Sellers but he's never particularly funny in Sellers' roles.Sellers might well have been the miserable git described in the book and the movie, though I think both book and movie are at fault for psychoanalyzing a dead person. That doesn't mean they are wrong (though original "Goon" Michael Bentine says a lot that has been said about Sellers is nonsense, while former wife and bombshell Britt Eckland says the movie doesn't go far enough! Take your pick.) Though Sellers disingenuously protested his own lack of a genuine persona, and though a person is not merely a series of syndromes that can be so blithely deconstructed, Sellers might well be the epitome of the old joke about television: that it brings into your living room people you wouldn't have in your house.What made Sellers was not so much his ability to "inhabit" his characters as to make them,when he was at his best, incredibly funny. And in this, Rush, and the movie fails. Like Sellers, Rush beautifully "inhabits" his characters. But in this movie his character is the real Sellers, the man who was able to make miserable everyone he came into contact with personally. Rush is unable to go the next step and show how Sellers was able to take a little makeup and maybe a mustache and bring joy to millions who -- fortunately -- would never get to meet him personally.But as for a surfer version of Sellers' life, the movie is probably as good as it will ever get as far as bio-pics. Instead of giving actual "Goon" scrips they show anarchy on the "Goon" stage. Instead of showing Sellers' actual proposal to Britt, they have Ray Ellington's son singing "You Make Me Fell So Young" in a wacky and (dare I say?) "Goonish" sequence. Sellers in the movie doesn't come off as half as destructive as (if hearsay is to be believed) he actually was; but it also fails to show why he was loved--because when he was on screen in his best roles (which curiously end about the time of "The Pink Panther") he was the best slapstick artist since the silent era and incredibly funny.Also bad: Nigel Havers has a bit part as David Niven, with nearly nothing to do! Apparently Havers has the rights to one of Nivens' memoirs. Let us hope he is allowed to do it. What a waste of a perfectly good actor.

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.