I have heard the term “nuclear football”, but 1959’s The Mouse That Roared is the first time I have a literal incarnation of one. This “Q-bomb” has been invented by American professor David Kossoff and it is taken by Peter Sellers when he abducts the professor and daughter Jean Seberg.
Sellers is Tully Bascome, and he has been tasked by Prime Minister Count Rupert Mountjoy (also Sellers) to attempt to invade America. These orders were approved by Duchess Gloriana XII, who is Sellers in a third role. I will refer to Sellers by which character he is playing at that time.
All three represent Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the smallest country in Europe. It’s sole export is a wine that was doing very well in America until a Californian knock-off pulled the market out from under them. In desperation, Mountjoy realizes the losers in wars against America have consistently been the recipients of generous reparations.
The inept Tully is selected for this mission because there is no chance he would possibly succeed in conquering the colonies. But it is opportunity and not ineptitude that leads Tully to accidentally succeed. All of New York City just happens to be doing an extended air raid drill. Everybody is supposed to be underground except for Civil Defense personnel. Turns out there is nobody to whom Sellers and company can surrender.
Two such men are wearing radiation suits in Central Park when they encounter Tully’s odd group, who are all wearing chainmail and wielding longbows. They will report back to their supervisors that they had encountered men from outer space, with the chainmail making one guy say, “They have scales!”. As I just recently read in a Terry Pratchett book, “A lie can run around the world before the truth can put its boots on”, and so this rumor spreads throughout the city.
It is in the invaders’ attempt to surrender that they end up at the Kossoff’s lab by accident, realize who he is and decide to take the bomb and its handlers back to Grand Duchy. Mountjoy is less than thrilled to see the unexpected victors return. Tully and his men have also brought a U.S. General they happened to capture, as well as some New York City police officers.
The military man and the cops make for some of the solid laughs in this. MacDonald Parke, as the general, is very insistent that he be treated in the manner befitting a prisoner of war as defined by the Geneva Convention. He demands to know the exact dimensions of the cell in which he will be kept, getting this response from the Duchess: “I don’t know, I’ve never measured them.” He is also very insistent upon being served his food on a tin plate, and she’s not sure they have any. Eventually, we will see Parke sitting in a dungeon and eating something off a tin plate, content in that he knows his rights. In the meantime, the police officers are eating gourmet meals off fine china while surrounded by comely young women.
The bomb is also a kind of character itself. It makes all kinds of strange clicking and whirring noises when it is jostled. This temperamental Q-bomb has put the whole world on a knife’s edge, and a great many countries are suddenly willing to offer their support to Grand Duchy. Not bad for a quirky little country that has had 500 years of peace. Their border crossing even has a sign to just enter if no guard is on duty. And just outside that crossing is the stop where Tully and the soldiers catch the bus on their first step to invade America.
This is a very funny picture, though the humor is at times broad enough to border on farce. The central idea of the plot is simply funny on its own. It opens with an interesting twist on the standard Columbia Pictures opening, with the lady on the pedestal fleeing after discovering a mouse at her feet. Many elements of the scenes in New York clicked for me, even little gags like Tully stepping in gum on the sidewalk and declaring “germ warfare!” There’s also a lengthy setup with a French bus ticket seller who doesn’t recognize what sounds to me like flawless French from Seberg, only to talk at length to Tully in that language. We see all of this in subtitles, with Tully simply responding “oui” to each statement. Afterwards, somebody ask him what the man said, and he responds in English, “I don’t know. I don’t speak French” and there’s a subtitle for that, too. There’s even a bit in the eventual negotiations which I hope inspired Austin Powers, as the American representative is appalled Tully only wants a million dollars in reparations, and asks for clarification he didn’t want a billion.
Of the performances, it is inevitable that Sellers would stand out the most, as he does triple duty here. I wonder what compelled him to do multiple roles in pictures such as this and Dr. Strangelove, and I wonder if he was feeling challenged by Alec Guinness having taken on a great many roles in Kind Hearts and Coronets. And I am always happy to see Leo McKern, though he is confined to a small role here as the leader of Grand Duchy’s opposition party. William Hartnell is another pleasant surprise, as the only man in the tiny country to have actually served in a war before and, therefore, the best person to guide Tully in the faux-attack on the U.S.A. The actor is good enough in this that I completely forgot he would go on to be T.V.’s first Doctor Who. Seberg fares the worst of the main cast, having little to do and is even rarely on-screen. She is little more than the inevitable love interest for Tully, a plot development which is forced without any real motivation. The switch in her personality is abrupt and total that I say she should be crowned Miss Stockholm Syndrome of 1959.
The Mouse That Roared has some minor issues with such elements as pacing, but it was enjoyable enough overall that it left me smiling. I like the idea of small country planning to go to war and fail, where the main objective, according to the Duchess, is that “nobody gets hurt”. The result is a small movie that is also harmless, about people with such adorably small aspirations as Mountjoy: “As soon as we get that money, we must get some of those malted milk machines.”
Dir: Jack Arnold
Starring three Peter Sellers’s, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell
Watched on Umbrella Australia blu-ray (region free)