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. 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.

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.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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. The DVD box claims that this mild comedy is 'hilarious' are somewhat inflated. Okay, the box copy on any comedy tends to exaggerate its hilarity, so we won't hold such hyperbole too strongly against it. That said, this modest sequel to The Mouse That Roared manages to entertain as what it is: a low key family comedy of moderate charms. 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...? Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Serenade Number 13 For Strings in G Major K. 525 Second Movement: Romanze: Andante by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The humour is badly outdated. In fact it was boring and old-fashioned already by the 80s, let alone now. 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.

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. It is easy to forget that this film was made before there had been any moon landings; plot points such as dust on the moon were real concerns for the Apollo astronauts when they landed for real, some years later. The planting of a flag (although not the first seen on film of course) was either prescient or life imitated art later on...?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. This episode is one of three season 1 episodes on iTunes to have the team use their US voices rather than their UK voices (like “Ring Around The Planet” and “Pirate’s Treasure”). When it was first imported to iTunes in 2007, it had the UK version. In 2012, when the series was split into 5 volumes, they replaced it with the USA version in the “Disney’s Little Einsteins” on the iTunes Store.