Bizarre 'Life,' humorless 'Death'

The release of "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" is something I had eagerly anticipated for a long time. I had heard rave reviews from the Cannes Film Festival, watched the film collect a couple Golden Globes and yet it never came out in theaters nor did I have access to HBO which it premiered on. So finally "Life and Death" finds its home on DVD and I must say I'm not pleased with the results.\nAvoiding any sort of back story whatsoever, the film jumps right in at Peter Sellers' (Geoffrey Rush) switch from hosting BBC radio programs to his acting career on the big screen. We watch his life unfold through various episodes ranging from his numerous collaborations with Blake Edwards (John Lithgow) on the popular "Pink Panther" series and a short focus on Stanley Kubrick's (Stanley Tucci) "Dr. Strangelove." Rather than remain focused on his films, the bigger picture is looking at how Sellers deconstructed himself and fell into various bouts of depression, which ruined marriages to original wife Anne (Emily Watson) and subsequent wife Britt Eckland (Charlize Theron). \nFirst and foremost, if you have never seen a Peter Sellers film, don't even bother watching "Life and Death" until you have. It isn't really a proper biopic and a lot of the jokes (which are quite sparse) are derived directly from his movies and aren't that funny without the background. The best part of the movie is Rush's performance as Sellers because he is dead-on every time and even looks exactly like him. However, like a lot of Sellers' movies, the rest of the cast remains in the background. Watson, Theron and Lithgow's performances are so random and episodic that they don't really have much time to shine. The relationship between Kubrick and Sellers, something I was really hoping would be covered in detail considering Kubrick loved Sellers' acting abilities, amounted to less than five minutes of screen time for Tucci. At almost two hours, a large part of the movie is a complete downer.\nThe DVD extras come with two commentary tracks, one featuring Geoffrey Rush and director Stephen Hopkins while the other has writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. There is 20 minutes worth of deleted scenes which thankfully remained cut out, considering they were all depressing, save one where Sellers keeps crashing his car into every car on the street. Finally, there is the typical making-of featurette containing interviews spliced with clips of the movie to fill up time. It was interesting hearing what the real Blake Edwards had to say about the movie, but nothing ground-breaking is discussed. \nIn the end, "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" isn't really a laughing matter. It's a serious look at one of cinema's greatest comedic chameleons and this ends up hurting the film. My advice would be just pickup "Dr. Strangelove" or the original "Pink Panther" flick and have yourself a good laugh.