What’s the point of the Dr. Strangelove revival?

I don’t dispute for one moment Coogan is a proper grown-up actor – he more than held his ground against Judi Dench in Philomena  – but taking on the multiple roles that the great Peter Sellers played in the Stanley Kubrick original was always going to be a stretch. 

The whole notion of adapting this of all movies was arguably foolhardy to begin with, but top marks to the set and costume designer Hildegard Bechtler for managing to conjure up, among other things, the vast White House War Room and a bomber armed with nuclear warheads speeding towards Russia.

Coogan’s Strangelove – the manic, wheelchair-bound closet Nazi that Sellers made such a good job of in the film – is transformed by Coogan into an Andy Warhol-like clown with a shock of blond hair and sadly none of the necessary sense of menace. 

His president seems again to be little more than an intriguing wig (top marks, too, to the wigs supervisor Kate Elizabeth) but he fares slightly better as Mandrake, the long-suffering British army officer holed up with the deranged American general Ripper (John Hopkins doing a superb take-off of Sterling Hayden in the original) who has seen fit to launch a nuclear missile strike against Russia. 

Even Sellers drew the line at playing the bomber commander – he left it to Slim Pickens, after sustaining a leg injury that precluded him from cramped cockpit scenes –  and Coogan mystifyingly invests this character with a Bill Clinton voice and hints at homosexuality.

The swift costume, wig and make-up changes that Coogan have to effect are admirable and it would be churlish to say it’s not occasionally mildly amusing. That didn’t stop me wondering as I left the theatre what ultimately was the point of it all when the film is available to hire and so very much more fun.