Leonard Wibberley

(On Cable TV, March 2021) Little-known follow-up to The Mouse That Roared, sequel The Mouse on the Moon takes the first entry’s inspired lunacy (which sees a tiny European country start a war with the United States in order to lose and get financial reparations, but ends up accidentally winning thanks to an improbable series of accidents) and re-applies it to the race to the moon. As with the original, the film is an adaptation of Leonard Wibberley’s novel — although this time around, the absence of an egomaniac actor like Peter Sellers seems to have let the filmmakers stay truer to the original text. The satire takes off early, as the fictional country of Grand Fenwick once again finds itself in a perilous financial situation: its wine bottles are exploding, so the Duchy asks the United States for a loan. Alas, things escalate and so Grand Fenwick soon finds itself in possession of a Soviet rocket and the intention of making it look as if they’re going for a moon shot of their own. Thanks to a resident genius scientist (naturalized after the events of the first film), the Duchy eventually beats both the Americans and the Soviets to the moon, to the merriment of all. The atmosphere of Cold War politics and Moon Race technology makes for entertaining period entertainment, as ridiculously contrived as the comic devices can be. While it’s not that funny nor that polished, Mouse on the Moon has moments of wit and the entire thing plays like a farce — keep in mind the production date in evaluating it against what really happened afterwards in the Race to the Moon.