The Mouse on the Moon

The Mouse on the Moon.
1962 United Artists; distributed to DVD by MGM.
Starring: Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, June Ritchie, Bernard Cribbins, David Kossoff, Terry-Thomas
Director: Richard Lester
Available at Amazon.

The sequel to The Mouse That Roared, and it's another movie based on a Leonard Wibberley satiric novel. Peter Sellers refused to appear in this one, so he was replaced by Terry-Thomas, and Richard Lester stepped in as director, ironically, at the recommendation of Sellers.

We return once more to the tiny European duchy of Grand Fenwick, the only English speaking territory on the continent. They're having serious money issues again, and their chief export, wine, is now showing signs of being severely combustable. Worst of all, the Prime Minister's (Moody) castle desperately needs new indoor plumbing, and the Duchess (Rutherford) would really like an Imperial Russian sable fur coat. He strikes upon an idea to ask the United States for five million dollars of aid to go to the fictional space program that Grand Fenwick is working on. The U.S. accomodates their request (they sense it as a great PR opportunity, and give fifty million bucks instead), but things get interesting when the Soviet Union donates a rocket to Grand Fenwick. Neither of the two superpowers believe that anything will come of this new "space program".

Grand Fenwick burns through the money necessary for the fur coat, the indoor plumbing, and paving every road in the dichy before realizing, hey, with their combustable wine and this rocket that the Ruskies gave them, they really could try beating the rest of the world to the moon.

Which, of course, they do, despite their efforts to convince officials from the U.S. and Russia otherwise.

Recommended satire, although the absence of Sellers is noticable, and he probably would've added something to the movie that Lester and Terry-Thomas could not.