“You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.”

While I wasn’t nearly as impressed by Dr. Strangelove as I was Paths of Glory and especially 2001: A Space Odyssey, I still found myself rather impressed by yet another one of Kubrick’s works. From what I understand, this was a very controversial movie when it came out, and I can definitely see why. I’m not going to dive into the political aspect really at all in this review, as a decent chunk of it went over my head, but from what I did understand, this was pretty bold for a film that came out in the 1960s.

Like I said, this movie definitely wasn’t nearly on the same level as Kubrick’s other two movies that I’ve seen thus far, but there were still a few things in particular that kept me interested. The first one is, of course, his directing. Kubrick’s eye is something pretty amazing, with almost every shot being incredibly well-composed and remarkable to look at. In addition to that, one thing I really wasn’t expecting out of this was spectacular special effects. I didn’t know that a lot of this movie had to do with planes, and all the plane scenes looked excellent and realistic, especially for the time. It’s definitely no 2001 in that regard, but you can tell it’s the same director.

Another thing that I found interesting was the dialogue. While I didn’t really jive with the comedy all that much, probably because I just didn’t get it, there were certainly moments that I found clever. There are three different sorts of points of view going on here: the plane (bomber), the Air Force base, and the war room, and the most interesting one by far was the war room. This was where most of the plot stuff was going on, and the characters, and, as I just mentioned, dialogue, really kept me intrigued whenever it cut back to it.

I think something that is definitely important in comedy films is characters that really stand out, and this certainly has that. The characters that we are introduced to at the beginning are all really interesting, even if they definitely aren’t all that deep, but the main standout was easily Dr. Strangelove, who becomes a bigger part of the film around halfway through. I really liked the over-the-top performance, and the character was silly and quirky enough to create this really interesting dichotomy between everyone else. If there was one thing from this film that will stick with me down the line, it will certainly be his character.

The last thing I’ll say here is that this movie does have a pretty great ending. I have to admit, I was definitely ready for this movie to be over by the time I got to just before the big climactic ending (which I’ll get to later), but the ending really got me by surprise. It’s very unexpected, but also very fitting.

When it comes to the mixed, I already mentioned this, but it’s definitely the comedy. There were bits that made me chuckle, don’t get me wrong, but those moments were really only the more simple humorous moments, and not the ones that had much to do with politics at all. From what I’ve heard, the political satire is supposed to be the best thing about the entire movie, but unfortunately, none of it landed for me. In fact, I didn’t even really know a lot of the moments that were even supposed to be funny.

The biggest negative on Dr. Strangelove for me has to be the pacing. 2001 and Paths of Glory were excellently paced in my opinion, and I never found anything to be unnecessary or uninteresting. Unfortunately, I think this movie, even though it is only about an hour and a half long, was dragged out quite a bit. I’m probably just missing something, but I think that pretty much everything with the Air Force base could have been cut out of the runtime, as well as a few scenes that just didn’t add a whole lot to the narrative. I would definitely say that out of the Kubrick movies I’ve seen thus far, this was easily his least tight in terms of pacing.

For me to say that this was a bad film would definitely be crazy, though. The production quality, cinematography, characters, and dialogue certainly kept me invested enough to enjoy most of it, even if it definitely didn’t leave much of a mark on me overall.