This is an amusing film, with a surprisingly early use of the concept of a time machine (Hungary's Sziriusz, from 1942, predates it), invented by professorial Felix Aylmer and crookedly financed by lovable scoundrel Tommy Handley. Thanks to a chapter of accidents, they go back in time to the sixteenth century, together with a vaudeville double act, the excellent Evelyn Dall and quite good George Moon. Presumably they hoped the film would get a US audience, as the modern-day bookends are set in a New York made of cardboard, all the money is in dollars and all the Elizabethan characters are carefully explained by Moon reading out of an encyclopedia.
Between them they give Shakespeare the lines for Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene, teach Elizabeth I how to play Find the Lady, introduce Stephane Grapelli's troubadour to jazz, and give Sir Walter Raleigh his first smoke. Tommy can't stop himself swindling people, and sells America off to the English nobility, much to the chagrin of Captain John Smith. Smith is accompanied by a statuesque and politically incorrect Pocahontas (the virtually unknown Iris Lang in a wonderful performance), who is surprisingly able to drink everyone under the table. Moore Marriott appears fleetingly in a pillory, and there is a bit more of Graham Moffatt, in their last film together.
It is a surprise to realise that Handley made so few films. As a radio comic, his trademark was idiotic double talk and lame puns strung together almost too quickly for the audience to groan. His screen time is always confident and he is obviously the star. He even dominates the opening scene from behind a curtain. It's That Man Again brilliantly realised the surreal radio series ITMA for the screen, and Time Flies, released a year later, might easily have led to a film career, but this was his last full-length picture.
The humour is of course of its time - if you don't like the highly verbal wordplay popularised by British wartime radio, then you won't like Handley's scenes very much. But Handley almost matches Will Hay in his creation of a wily, despicable, cowardly, cheating and yet wholly likable petty crook, played without the remotest hint of sentimentality.
