Cinema: The New Pictures, Jun. 27, 1960

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Carlton-Browne counters the Cossacks with a troupe of left-footed secret service men disguised as Morris dancers. When this proves disastrous (the island's king, about to die of boredom, is assassinated), C-B flies out to compound the calamity, ably assisted by Gaillardia's Prime Minister Amphibulos (Peter Sellers), who embodies everything fine and honest in Balkan politics. Eventually, the U.N. (accompanied by a faint but distinct celestial choir) decides to partition Gaillardia, an act undertaken with marvelous literalness by painting a chalk line down its middle, ruthlessly separating sow from piglet, peasant from privy. To their horror, the British discover that a deposit of Epsom salts in the Russian sector is really cobalt. "D you realize," says CB, ''we could absolutely blow up the entire world? Smashing." The muddling has just begun.

The plot devised by Scriptwriters Jeffrey Dell and Roy Boulting is as complicated as Trevelyan's History of England, but no matter. The fun is watching Actor Terry-Thomas come into his own, as Co-Star Sellers did in The Mouse That Roared. No comedian can rise to a challenge with greater stupor, or be more benumbingly British. Near the film's end, a Britisher bound for Gaillardia inquires whether the island offers anything to shoot. Answers Terry-Thomas, pukka as Lord Clive: ''Only the natives, old boy.''