This film is part of Rentals

Time Flies U rating

Fast-talking funny man Tommy Handley visits Elizabethan England - and ends up teaching Good Queen Bess con tricks - in this snappy time-travel comedy.

Comedy 1944 88 mins

Director: Walter Forde

Overview

This rollicking flight of fancy sees Liverpool-born comic Tommy Handley - best known for his cheery wartime radio comedy show, ITMA - take a trip back to Ye Olde England inside a dotty professor's amazing 'Time Ball'. While he's there, he and his friends teach Raleigh to smoke, help Shakespeare pen a few tricky lines, and introduce the peasants to the joys of jazz music.

Some of the jokes in Time Flies would surely have been considered corny in Shakespeare's day, but amid the puns and patter are some remarkably prescient sci-fi ideas - a futuristic camera, capable of capturing and instantly replaying moving images, seems a lot like a hand-held digital video device. Notable among a strong supporting cast are Felix Aylmer, outstanding as a scientist in a world of his own, and Will Hay's old sidekicks: Moore Marriott as a Nostradamus-like soothsayer, and Graham Moffatt as his surly nephew. Digitisation supported by The Mohamed S. Farsi Foundation.