The Reluctant Astronaut

The Reluctant Astronaut stars Don Knotts as the owner and operator of kiddie ride in an amusement park somewhere in rural Missouri who has a fear of heights. He's something of a disappointment to his WW1 veteran father Arthur O'Connell, but he's mother Jeanette Nolan's darling little boy.

With a bit of pressure Knotts applies for a position with NASA. But after a big farewell blowout, he finds he's been hired as a janitor with Jesse White as a perpetually exasperated supervisor.

He does go into space, but quite accidentally and then because NASA is testing a most automatic space capsule one designed for idiots in space. That provides a lot of climatic laughs.

The film owes a lot of Preston Sturges's classic comedy Hail The Consquering Hero. And some of the astronaut sequences were tried out in the Road To Hong Kong with Bob and Bing.

A couple of other major roles are filled out well by Joan Freeman as Knotts's Missouri girlfriend and Leslie Nielsen as an astronaut who befriends him.

The comedy which is set in America's early days of space travel still holds up well for today's audience.