Just perfect...

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Dr. Strangelove" is a fine movie, but I'd rather lose Peter Sellers's three legendary performances there than the first few seconds of his title role in "Hoffman", where he simply opens a door and stares at a young woman with succulent, lich-like longing.The rest of "Hoffman" is nearly as good, so much so it's a surprise it hasn't been picked up for cult-movie status like some other lesser Sellers films have. Part of the problem, of course, is that "Hoffman" is a kind of transgressive pleasure.Sellers plays Benjamin Hoffman, a middle-management guy who develops an office crush on the pretty-but-engaged Janet Smith (Sinéad Cusack). When Hoffman finds out Janet's fiancé has been stealing from their common employer, Hoffman invites Janet to his London pad for a weeklong stay that involves philosophy, creepy stares, pajama-clad standoffs, and the threat of sex if not the actual thing itself."Hope never dies in a man with a good dirty mind," Hoffman declares.Director Alvin Rakoff and his team play up the spookiness of the assignation. They shoot Sellers like Christopher Lee in a Hammer Dracula film, his red-rimmed eyes staring blankly at Cusack. One scene of him inside an elevator in pursuit of her reminds me of Dracula awaiting sunset inside his coffin. He also sucks snails and rubs liniment on her bare neck, furthering the connection.Not an easy comedy for pure laughs, "Hoffman" delivers humor more in the form of perverted menace, especially when Janet is reacting to his more over-the-top pronouncements. "Please make yourself look as though you want to be fertilized" is almost the first thing out of his mouth when Janet arrives, and the conversation goes downhill from there.What makes "Hoffman" more affecting is the realness of Sellers' performance, the sense of watching a real person for once behind the mask Sellers so effortlessly employed. Benjamin Hoffman is a vampire or sorts, but one with a heart, who views his victim with compassion and sees his situation as a possible victory for "men who missed the boat but still need love".The script by Ernest Gébler offers up many odd lines which rub some the wrong way and no doubt contribute to "Hoffman's" low reputation. A New York Times critic once inveighed against Hoffman's comment: "It's not only homosexuals who don't like women. Hardly anybody likes them." Of course, that's Hoffman's line, a guy who tells a woman he loves that women are just fallopian tubes with teeth. The fact he is so lost is part of the movie's comedy and part of its tragedy at the same time. Frankly, I also find the line hilarious.There are groaner lines in "Hoffman", though, like when Hoffman tells Janet: "Why don't you stop stabbing me in the face with your doomed youth!" Huh? Give Cusack credit for providing such a resonant backstop to Seller's left-field banter, and giving her character the right amount of innocence and sex to make the whole thing work. Too much of one or the other, and it would fly off the rails."Hoffman" is probably not for everyone. It moves slowly, spends a lot of time with just two people in frame, and plays its comedy close to the vest. But for those who give it a chance, and especially those who adore Sellers going in, "Hoffman" is like a valentine wrapped inside a hand grenade just waiting to surprise you with a seriously fulfilling rumination on the riddle of love.

Hoffman is another of the lonely middle-aged man pictures that Peter Sellers made during this period (1967-70), mostly, I think to prop up his fragile ego by co-starring him with young beautiful women after his marriage to Britt Ekland crashed. This one may contain the best Sellers performance of those movies (The Bobo-with Ekland-, I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, and There's A Girl In My Soup being the others), although it ultimately flops and leaves one with a feeling of dissatisfaction at the end. Sellers plays a business executive who blackmails his beautiful secretary into spending a week with him (he's got the goods on her and her fiance). The standout quality of the film is Sellers' brilliantly underplayed brooding madman, a man with a buried charm beneath a front of psycho-erotic fantasies. Even though the movie has moments of light comedy, one never fails to see the singularly terrifying quality of Sellers' obsession with the girl, either sexual or homicidal. He is marvelously ambiguous in the performance; when he massages the secretary's (Sinead Cusack) neck to work out a cramp, one is not quite sure if he won't crush her to death right there. Unfortunately, the movie follows the all-too-familiar plotline of these Peter Sellers movies. He is the unwanted one, the oddball, who frightens his female prey, until she sees his good side and warms up to him. It is nearly an inverse of The Bobo, where Ekland played the evil one and Sellers the innocent. The Bobo sets the audience up for a happy ending, then ends in a distasteful, unfunny joke. The only way to end Hoffman appropriately is for him to kill Miss Cusack. When the bedroom door closes behind them in the final shot, somehow we don't sense a 25th anniversary in store for this couple. It just isn't believable; why would she go back to this kook? Yet on some level it works, as symbolic of the limited choices for happiness among working class people. The problem is, in a movie, it doesn't work, because the audience is conditioned to responding to motives that are understandable, and everyone knows a beautiful young woman is always in the drivers' seat. The best thing about Hoffman is the supremely conditioned performance by Sellers, one of the world's greatest actors. I don't know if Miss Cusack can act; mostly she walks through the whole picture with that terrified little girl look on her face, but she is adorable. But like The Bobo, the ending undercuts the whole picture; after the script has set us up for strangulation, we get hearts and flowers, and its not a relief; it's a con and a disappointment. 2 1/2 ** out of 4

This happens to be one of the most underrated films of Peter Sellers' career. For some reason the critics and book writers have (in their majority) faced the film as a comedy (have they seen the film?), when it is clear it is a drama with just little sparkles of comedy...Peter Sellers and Sinead Cusack are wonderful in their roles and I have to admit I have seen the film more than 10 times in my life (I never have enough!). For the critisism the film faced, one can say that generally Peter Sellers was in the target of certain columnists who never fail to badmouth the successful and the famous (a bad comment always sells more). So, the film (and others of this era of Sellers' career)was an easy target to hit the star and not judge the film for its essence... The film also features wonderful music and it's a pity the soundtrack was never released...

Peter Sellers is in best form as an office worker who has always been obsessed with the office secretary, and just before she gets married he blackmails her to spend a week in his apartment letting her think the worst. But in the meantime, he starts to prove something very different to her about himself.