Word: fenwick
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mouse on the Moon is a very comforting movie, especially if you are worried about the World Situation. There they are: clean-shaven Americans, rumpled Russians and quaintly inefficient Englishmen, and the preposterous Duchy of Grand Fenwick which foils them all and finally saves the world...
...Grand Fenwick is the same country that won World War III in The Mouse that Roared and more or less the same principality which Peter Ustinov presided over in Romanoff and Juliet. This time the Fenwickians win the space race in a rocket supplied by the Soviet Union, financed by the United States, and fueled with the wine of Grand Fenwick. But the story isn't crucial; it's simply an excuse for a machine-gun-fast series of gags satirizing such juicy targets as international diplomacy, German scientists, student peace marchers, and American grammar...
Since Mouse was produced by Englishmen, it's not surprising that Grand Fenwick is slightly British. Its tiny parliament is divided into exaggerated Tories in morning clothes and cravats and stereotyped socialists in identical, ill-fitting brown suits. Its Duchess, charmingly played by Margaret Rutherford, calls herself "we" and suggests that the matter of indoor plumbing be referred to the Privy Council...
...humor isn't always subtle, at least it makes you laugh. Grand Fenwick's prime minister, delivering a fireside chat, destroys his country's television network by sticking his finger through the camera. When the rocket is about to be launched, the Fenwickians interrupt the countdown at four for tea. And so on for an hour and a half. Terry-Thomas, Ron Moody, Roddy McMillan and half a dozen others help Miss Rutherford make Mouse on the Moon a delightful escape...
...that the duchy launches in full ivew of an invited delegation of U.S., British and Russian diplomats has a fringed curtain at a stained-glass window, and carries a hot water bottle, a teapot, a cage of live chickens, a ukulele and a selection of good wines. When Grand Fenwick's spacemen get to the moon just ahead of the Americans and Russians, they plant their flag, turn to the arrivals, and say: "Oh, good evening there. Grand Fenwick welcomes you to its moon," and invite them all to a chicken dinner. But long before this, the lampoon loses...