HEAVENS ABOVE! Movie Review

Probably the weakest of the Boulting brothers' comedies of the 1960s, this is the story of a prison chaplain (Peter Sellers) who's transferred by clerical error to an upscale parish. The movie's tongue-in-cheek satirical digs at the hypocrisies of the church and its flock are like an undistinguished slice of cheese: too mild, too many holes, not particularly sharp, but harmless. Sellers is a joy, however, in one of his less-flamboyant performances of the period. Immediately after Heavens Above!, Sellers would make Dr. Strangelove for Stanley Kubrick, and his career would enter hyperdrive. If Heavens Above! is significant in any way, it's that it provides one last look at the great comic actor prior to the long, fruitful Hollywood period that would follow. (The pre-Clouseau Sellers has a certain shining purity, not unlike the pre-Army Elvis.) With Cecil Parker, Isabel Jeans, Ian Carmichael, Brock Peters and Roy Kinnear.

NEXT STOP … I'm All Right, Jack, The Wrong Arm of the Law, Lolita

1963 113m/B GB Peter Sellers, Cecil Parker, Isabel Jeans, Eric Sykes, Ian Carmichael; D:John Boulting, Roy Boulting; M:Richard Rodney Bennett. VHS FCT