Carlton-Browne of the F.O.

Amazon.com Carlton-Browne of the F.O. is a little less tart and smart in its assault on British diplomacy than the earlier satires by John and Roy Boulting. The much-loved Terry-Thomas plays the idiot son of a great ambassador, given a sinecure in the Foreign Office that becomes a hot seat when crises rock the almost-forgotten former colony of Gaillardia. Clod-hopping "dance troupes" of every world power dig for cobalt, a line of partition is painted across the entire island, and the young King (Ian Bannen) is undermined by his wicked uncle (John le Mesurier) and unscrupulous Prime Minister Amphibulos (Peter Sellers). There's a touch of royal romance as the King gets together with a rival princess (the winning Luciana Paoluzzi), but it's mostly mild laughs at the expense of British ineptitude, with Thorley Walters as the dim army officer, Miles Malleson as the gouty consul, and a snarling Raymond Huntley as the minister. The film finds Sellers's nonspecific foreign accent unusually upstaged, with Terry-Thomas walking off with most of the comedy scenes. It fumbles a bit with obvious targets, especially in comparison with similar films like Passport to Pimlico and The Mouse That Roared, but you can't argue with a cast like this. --Kim Newman