Still, I could be wrong. Perhaps it succeeded. After all, the production values are fairly high, and perhaps the adults from the 60s didn't mind being served kiddie humor. In fact, I know they didn't. Most of them, at least. The film is notable for using a mix of traditional and innovative special effects. The lunar landscapes were created by photographer Ken Marschall, who used a unique painting technique that blended photographic and hand-painted elements. The spacecraft itself was designed by future Star Wars designer John Barry. Russia scored first when Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel in space. On April 12, 1961, he orbited the earth in Vostok 1. The U.S. scored second with the first man on the moon in 1969. Neil Armstrong left earth in Apollo 11 on July 16 with Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, and Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. Humor based on character situations would have made more sense. For example, the professor is such a politically-correct, morally perfect bore: he says and does nothing funny, is there just as a dull stereotype to help push the "scientific" part of the story forward. He is completely uninteresting. Why couldn't he be a bumbling fool? Maybe a skirt-chaser? Slightly devious? Not necessarily an unfunny clown, but at least an imperfect person, someone with vices, a human being that one can attach gags to. Certainly the "astronaut" and his love-interest could have had more interaction, resulting in at least a few (mildly) amusing situations.

If you have not yet seen either 'Mouse' film, it is probably better to see this one first, rather than view it with expectations raised by the other one. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik in the music sheet is in G Major which is the correct pitch, but in The Birthday Balloons, it's in D Major.

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These films are more interesting as "ancient" oddities, as historical artifacts almost. Except that in 100 years the word "almost" will no longer serve a purpose. In 100 years, people will consider such films as exotic as the Dodo bird.

The movie is a very lighthearted take on the space craze of the 1960s. The satire it pokes on Cold War politics in a whimsical way is quite entertaining. Margaret Rutherford steals the show with her humorous portrayal of the eccentric Grand Duchess Gloriana, while Ron Moody's character, Mountjoy, is the straight man in the comedy. Bernard Cribbins is a delight as the bumbling spy, and the script is full of witty and humorous lines. In some ways, the first novel and this sequel are both science fiction, imagining a world where a tiny nation develops some key new technology and uses it to leapfrog the superpowers in importance and genuine power. This science--a type of nuclear bomb in the first novel and a new type of nuclear power in the second--dismantles the power balance of the time (1960s). It's a nice thought experiment, and the author uses it to tell a gentle satire on the politics of that time. It's also got a little comedy, a little romance, and international politics, making it easy to see why it was made into a movie. In 1961, a year before The Mouse On the Moon was published, the Soviet Union launched the first crewed spaceship to orbit the Earth. It remained in space for less than two hours. In 1969, during NASA's Apollo 11 mission, the first men walked on the Moon. [3] During an earlier 1969 space mission Apollo 10 orbited the Moon at a speed of 24,790 miles per hour. [4] Book plot [ edit ]

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Serenade Number 13 For Strings in G Major K. 525 First Movement: Allegro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The humour is badly outdated. In fact it was boring and old-fashioned already by the 80s, let alone now. This is the second time Leo makes an angry face, He looks angry when he tells the team to prepare and go over the snow bumps.

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This isn't biting satire, but whimsical, though it isn't less effective for that. It still forces the reader to think from the perspective of citizens of small nations and maybe reconsider (as an American) how much we walk on other people without considering their rights. Since then, the space race has ended, and modern space exploration is done by several nations, most often in cooperative ventures. But, for 1963 the space race was a hot item. So, this film naturally had more interest. The script milks it as much as possible. But, only mildly funny in places then, the script doesn't hold as much interest among audiences in the 21st century.

While camping at nightfall, the team watches the moon on the sky, and the moon shines it light as a way of saying hello. A little mouse is carrying a present for the moon but the moon moves to Switzerland. Now, the team must go to Switzerland so that little mouse can give his present to the moon. However, they must do so before the moon goes down. The premise is that of a typical "clever" political "satire", though in practice more like a kiddie version of one. The writers would have been better off trying to create humorous situations concerning the main characters than try so bloody hard to explain the intricacies of international diplomacy and the Space Race. Why? Because all of the diplomatic stuff can only interest adults - yet the humor is mostly geared toward kids. The discrepancy makes no sense, which is why I assume the film bombed. This film does appear on UK TV from time to time; for example on the Sony Movie Classic channel. However this raises my main disappointment concerning this film; the Sony 'watermark' is huge and obtrusive as usual, but the conversion from Celluloid to PAL video which they broadcast is almost an object lesson in 'how not to do it'; goodness knows what they did (possibly started with a bad print, converted badly to NSTC and then badly to PAL?) but the result is fuzzy, jerky in places, with poor/unsynchronized sound quality. The net result is pretty execrable; in places I'd describe it as 'almost unwatchable' in fact. This isn't the best film ever but my enjoyment of it was seriously impaired by the rotten quality of the broadcast video. I can only suppose (and hope) that commercial DVDs are better than that; they surely can't be worse...?

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Meanwhile, a bumbling spy, Vincent Mounteney (Bernard Cribbins), has been sent by Britain to investigate and disrupt the moon mission. His clumsy interference causes chaos on Earth and the moon, leading to a series of hilarious misadventures.