User reviews

I generally love Will Hay but this has to be the most trying of his movies - though it has its moments, it's a bit overlong in general and plays on too few jokes. Will is Benjamin Twist (again!) and is a ship porter who ends up a passenger when the passenger he is tending, a runaway crook, drugs him and swaps places with Twist. Twist doesn't awake until he's far at sea, past the point of no return. He joins up with another stowaway and both end up getting off the ship with a herd of cows (their fake cow suit is actually pretty impressive) before they are caught.

In the US, Twist ends up tutor to a disgusting little twerp of a child, while his friend ends up in the ring that kidnaps said child - only neither knows the other's profession.

In the end, you can't help feeling that the parents would have been better off letting the criminals keep the child ;)

Will Hay was a late-blooming British film comedian of the 1930s and early 1940s. His style was a rapid-fire delivery that was very good. But, with his English accent and occasional slang of a place and time, it made following his dialog difficult at times for English speakers on this side of the pond.

In this film, Hay heads to America, but not by choice in the plot. I'm sure the whole thing was filmed at Islington studios in England, save for the ocean scenes and panorama of New York City. As with most of the plots of the films Hay made, this one is far-fetched and quite silly. But, silliness of plots is often a big part of comedy. And, in this one, the story is a real hoot. The few other reviewers to this time didn't think much of this film, but I think it has some very funny scenes and situations. And, the supporting cast add considerably to the humor.

Arthur Goullet is especially good as Henry "Gloves" Johnson. The scenes are very good in which Johnson shows frustration with his buddy, Dr. Benjamin Twist (played by Hay). Johnson calls him "baldy," and when Hay's character wrongly construes things that Johnson says or does, Johnson shows great angst with some very funny facial contortions.

This is an amusing and fun movie that most people should enjoy.

Firstly I would mention that this film was originally made for distribution by Gaumont British.However the company crashed in unexplained circumstances in 1938'Rank bought the assets under his company,General Film Distributors and a whole new chapter in British cinema was begun.Gaumont had a failed policy of importing American actors to break into the American market.This explains the appearance of Edgar Kennedy in this film..The problem is that Kennedy and Hay have completely different styles of comedy and they just don't work well together.Kennedy is very much the physical comedian whereas Hay tends to rely on words,puns and tongue twisters.So the script is tailored for both and it just doesn't work.Although Hay didn't like working as part of a team,nevertheless his best films are with Moore Marriott and Graham Moffat..