La souris qui rugissait

This is a delightful movie, my wife and I have enjoyed this one over the years. And each year it is better. The message is blunt, declare war on the U.S. and lose. However, it is the subtle background which is so good. One must just sit back and enjoy the movie and Peter Sellers. It is not often one gets to just watch a master of the arts at work. There is nothing heavy duty slapstick. Just a fun time.

The film version of "The Mouse That Roared" was so funny and charming that, upon spying an old, used paperback edition of Leonard Wibberley's book and its two immediate sequels, I felt compelled to buy them. What an utter delight they are! The book is somewhat different from the film, in that Duchess Glorianna XII is a very sexy, young woman, who ends up marrying the heroic Tully Bascomb (who isn't as much of a dullard as he was portrayed by Peter Sellers). Perhaps the characters that are the closet in the film to their literary counterparts are Count Mountjoy and Professor Kokintz. In fact, Sellers truly nailed the sly, pompous Mountjoy to a tee in the film, even if the character isn't quite as odious in the novel. Wibberley's "The Mouse That Roared" is the only book in the "Mouse" series currently in print, but many libraries carry the others: "The Mouse on the Moon" (also filmed, in 1963), "The Mouse on Wall Street," "The Mouse That Saved the West," and the illustrated prequel, "Beware the Mouse."

Yes, the "joke" is rather a truism: declare war on the US, lose and then collect the massive foreign aid we always send... Peter Sellers has fun in his several roles, along with a cast of strong supporting actors. The standard "pretty blonde" is Jean Seberg -- who seems not to know what she's doing in this role: comedy was not the lady's strongpoint.

Yet there is something very gentle and charming that moves this film along. I suppose that little something could very well be that the "bottom line" for the tiny country was world peace... Not a bad concept.

Worth watching.

This little satire of the cold war has none of the smug reactionary stances that the original novel had. It takes aim at great powers and small no-powers, it skewers democracies (like the US and Britain) and aristocracies (like the grand duchy of Fenwick and Britain) and shows absolutely no mercy.

Done when Peter Sellers was in his "fat boy" period, this well cut little movie has to be placed in context in order to be appreciated fully. 40 years ago the world was quite different, and this movie reminds you of it. See something totally different from the same period, like Rear Window by Hitchcock to get you in the spirit of the times.

A fey, light-hearted frolic that almost floats away on its own marshmellowy charm, "The Mouse That Roared" served to introduce American audiences to the man who would reshape film comedy in the 1960s much the way his countrymen the Beatles did with pop music.

Yes, that's Peter Sellers making what amounted to his debut as an over-the-title star, playing not one but three roles. First, he's Count Rupert Mountjoy, prime minister of the tiny nation of Grand Fenwick, who hatches the scheme of declaring war on the United States in order to quickly surrender and reap Marshall Plan-style aid. Then he's Tully Bascombe, the nearsighted leader of the Fenwick expeditionary force, who stumbles upon a weapon to force an American surrender. Finally, he's the Grand Duchess Gloriana, ruler of Grand Fenwick and very keen on war so long as no one gets hurt.

With that premise, and Sellers in the driver's seat, you expect more than "Mouse That Roared" delivers. Not that it's bad, or unentertaining. But after a rousing opening 20 minutes spent basking in Fenwick's goofy ambiance and establishing the daring plot, the film loses steam; first moving the action to an unconvincing Manhattan setting, then inserting a romantic subplot between Tully and an American girl (Jean Seberg) which features neither actor to good effect. The comedy is never sharp, but over time it becomes forced, recovering a bit only at the end.

It's a shame because the premise, as said, offers much, and director Jack Arnold, while no Kubrick, seems to appreciate both Sellers' gift for light comedy and the kind of film which suits that best. At times, especially with some inspired breaks from the action, "The Mouse That Roared" feels more like an Ealing comedy than the Ealing comedy Sellers actually made four years before, the far darker "Ladykillers."

"Mouse" has an edge to it, regarding the folly of mutually assured destruction and American hegemony, yet it manages to couch this very cleverly by emphasizing how essentially good the U.S. really is. You try selling the idea of a film showcasing a successful sneak attack against New York, in which the attackers are presented as the good guys. Yet "Mouse That Roared" was a monster hit, and for that Arnold and his team deserve credit.

"Only an imbecile could have won this war, and he did!" complains Mountjoy of Bascombe, seeing no good in holding America hostage with a football-shaped explosive device 100 times more powerful than an H-Bomb.

Sellers is distinctive if not a laugh magnet in his three roles, but the film suffers from poor supporting work around him. Except for Leo McKern, playing Mountjoy's scheming ally, no one distinguishes him- or herself around Sellers, and a couple of key performances are gratingly bad. The humor of the Fenwickians being mistaken as spacemen by Manhattanites is beaten to the ground, as is the "comedy" of Tully's gang peppering the QEII with arrows as it passes them on the ocean.

History favors the big battalions, but comedy loves the underdog. Here you are presented with a vehicle for an underdog who would prove every bit as worthy of our favor as Chaplin or Keaton, though it would take better films to make that point.