If Roger Lewis' show biz bio is to be believed, The Life And Death of Peter Sellers were hollow things, indeed. As portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in Stephen Hopkins' HBO telemovie the brilliant British comic actor was less than the sum of his characters: it's telling that the one figure he felt the most affinity to was the hero of Being There - a project that the actor pushed to get lensed, we're meant to see, because Sellers envied Chauncey Gardiner's emotion-free blankness.

Despite a rollicking cartoon opening meant to recall brightly colored sixties era comedies (done to the bellowing strains of Tom Jones' "What's New, Pussycat?"), Life And Death is pretty grim fare: Portrait of The Artist as An Empty Vessel. Reared by his grotesque show biz mama (Miriam Margolyes, looking as ever like a John Tenniel caricature) into infantile pursuit of perpetual self-gratification ("Peter always got the last cake," his father sez in monologue, "even off someone else's plate!"), Rush's Sellers is never so appealing as when he's playing one of his comic creations. Even when he's within his family, the actor regularly retreats into a series of funny accents and poses. Stripped of all his covers, he's an abusive spoiled brat.

Director Hopkins and book adapters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely work overtime to capture the living contradiction was Sellers, though it'll probably come as no surprise to anyone that a gifted comedian could be an overly needy ass in real life. Hopkins sprinkles 60's confectionary imagery throughout to contrast with the messiness of Sellers' personal life, while each of the major figures in his life also gets to walk off the film set and deliver a face-the-camera monologue. In a what th? moment that initially comes across clever but ultimately falls apart by the time it's used for Sellers' dying mother, each off-set version of the character is played by Rush-playing-Sellers-playing-the-real-life-person: per the movie, playing dress-up was the only means that Sellers had of controlling the world around him. In one of the movie's sadder scenes, the comedian is visited by his mater while he's working on the filming of Dr. Strangelove. The whole time the two visit, Sellers, dressed as the title character, refuses to break out of his German accent as he delivers veiled insults to his mother. When later asked how her visit with Peter went, Ma Sellers responds, "I don't know. I didn't see him."

As the Sellers, Rush (no mean chameleon, himself) is an inspired casting choice, even if he does look a bit too full in the face in spots. The rest of the cast is fine, though as someone who once had a big ol' Sophia Loren poster on his dorm wall, I didn't quite accept Sonia Acquino as the Italian actress. John Lithgow has crisp fun overplaying Blake Edwards, Sellers' most successful long-term collaborator, while Stanley Tucci recreates soft-spoken control-freak Stanley Kubrick in a more subdued mode. Both directors find themselves victimized by Sellers' erratic off-camera behavior: in the latter case, the actor ducks out of playing a fourth role in Dr. Strangelove by passive-aggressively "spraining" his leg (Slim Pickens'll forever be indebted to this act!), while in the former, Sellers indulges in a squirmingly prolonged unplanned "roast" of director Edwards at the premiere party for a Pink Panther film. Of the many women in his life (Sellers was married four times - though we only meet two of 'em - and was not averse to sixties-style "swinging" either), Emily Watson and Charlize Theron play familiar roles as first wife, Anne, and second spouse Brett Eckland, respectively. Theron's Eckland gets a strong fight scene with Rush (as egomaniacal-sized photos of the two actors look down on the proceedings), but it's divine sufferer Watson who most sticks with you.