Cinema: God's Simpleton

Heavens Above! dresses Peter Sellers —who at one time or another or simultaneously has been a truculent union leader, a dotty dowager duchess, an energetic young soldier, a slimy American playwright, and an earnest Hindu doctor—in round collar and benevolent simper, and makes him a vicar. Sellers gets better and better even if his movies do not. Cinema spoof British-style keeps searching farther and wider for ideas, and audiences have only to consult the credits for proof: this film was based on a conceit of that self-ordained iconoclast, Malcolm Muggeridge.

Oh, it was a terrible mistake, all right, sending a well-meaning...