After two well-received support turns, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne got their own starring vehicle with this mild comedy. It uses a solid premise – they are abroad when confused for two agents, resulting in people trying to kill them – but the result is middling.
I don’t think Radford and Wayne really make great leads, because they are reactive characters so they keep having to be thrown into situations to get a response from them. Their material isn’t as strong – the stuff about wanting to go to the cricket feels tacked on, not integrated into the plot. It could have done with more of that funny Englishmen abroad humour, because what’s there is strong (eg in an Arab tent they wish they had dinner dress). Maybe they needed to be put in a more exotic location than Hungary and Syria – like Africa, or have the whole film set in Arabia (it is at the beginning). Whatever the reason, the whole film feels like it needed a rewrite from Launder and Gilliat, or someone else who really understood the characters.
It’s a good idea to have Wayne engaged to Radford’s sister (although Wayne and Radford wind up in bed together towards the end) but not enough is made of this. Indeed, it’s a shame we don’t see more of the families of both. The female lead is very good looking – although I don’t believe for a second she’d wind up with Wayne. It’s a pleasant enough diversion, but it suffers from being constructed in the shadow of Charters and Caldicott’s appearances in other films, two of which were classics.
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