It's That Man Again

I hadn't heard of any of the actors in this film before nor the radio show it was based on however I still managed to get a few laughs out of it. The mayor of Foaming At The Mouth, an odd name even for a fictional town is broke and in a game of poker has 'won' a theatre, this theatre however isn't as grand as he first hopes and also comes with an acting school full of pupils who have paid but haven't received any tuition. One thing leads to another and they end up putting on a variety show, getting this show on stage means lots of twists and turns before the big night. The lead role played by Tommy Handley is mildly amusing, his rapid quickfire humour wears off before the end of the film and his bumbling ever loyal assistant also suffers from a similar fate, the best laughs however come from the end of the film which helps to keep the film going. All the cast play their roles well and the overall production is decent enough so although I had no idea who 'that man' was he helped entertain me for an hour and a half.

Looking over gags in cold print often fails to amuse. How loved would the Marx Brothers be if their classic routines had only appeared in print and not on film? As Tommy Handley said in ITMA, this was written with a hairpin on the back of a piece of fried bread; commenting on the merits of ITMA generations later was not dreamed about.

Handley was one of Britain's best-loved Variety comedians, and helped create WW2 morale boosting ITMA, on BBC radio 1939-1949 - most of the cast are present and most of their catch phrases are reproduced here. It was probably the War that led to so many of these phrases becoming part of the national consciousness, providing a crazy sub-language with which ordinary people could communicate in dire times. Although this also happened in Britain in the 50's with the Goon Show - and their film attempts were on the poor side too. ITMA and THEGS were manic radio shows creating ridiculous mental pictures for the listeners, giving the characters substance in pictures did not help. When he died suddenly in '49 it was a Death of John Lennon type cataclysm for my grandmother! Millions of people (including the Windsors at Buckingham Palace) had listened to the radio show, and thousands were at his funeral.

As a film ITMA stands up pretty well overall, fast and furious gags and routines abound, but then it gets bogged down with songs and partial adherence to a script: the usual problem for comedy of this kind. Even "Hellzapoppin" was hamstrung in this manner; ITMA is also hamstrung by contriving to get every single catchphrase in before the end. None of which I'm going to quote for the a/m reason!

However, you certainly will have to appreciate pre-Rock & Roll British humour to enjoy this to the same extent as I do.

Where did the comedians of vaudeville go when the talkies came to the cinema? Well most of them retired gracefully and vaudeville ceased to exist - but a few made the jump from stage to screen. The period around the 1930s and even later nurtured a crop of famous movie comedians like W C Fields, Laurel & Hardy and the Three Stooges. They amused millions with low comedy based on slapstick, vulgarity and absurdist banter.

There were others across the Atlantic who are not so well known to us now, including Arthur Askey and Tommy Handley. Some of the movies of these lesser lights still stand up well today, like Askey's `The Ghost Train'(1941).

Sorry to say that's where the flattery ends in this review. Tommy Handley should have stayed on BBC radio where he was apparently popular. This movie is crass and painfully unfunny. Perhaps we are victims of changing tastes in humor, but if you get your laughs from such gems as `Well, push me into the pit with a poleaxe!' or `There's something amiss, Miss!', then you'd be a rare person indeed. Handley races through the flimsy script in manic style relying on little more than funny voices and fast delivery to bamboozle us into thinking that something amusing is happening. It isn't. Even if you have an affection for vaudeville, don't bother with this woeful effort which will leave you feeling depressed. Watch something intellectual by the Three Stooges instead.

"It's That Man Again" is a very wacky, frenetic British comedy. This is a rare movie - one of only two feature films in which Tommy Handley stars. He is joined by a number of other players from his hit radio show, "ITMA," that was broadcast over the BBC from 1939 to 1949. It ended with Handley's death that year. "ITMA" has been credited with helping keep up the morale in England during World War II.

The radio show got its title from the acronym of the phrase, "It's that man again." The origin of that expression in England is quite funny. It had something to do with a certain crazy dictator who had been stirring things up in Europe in the 1930s. When the newspapers and the BBC news would have the latest on the goings-on in Germany, Brits would be heard saying, "It's that man again." But, in its article on Tommy Handley, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that the phrase was first used in America. Whenever Pres. Franklin Roosevelt came up with another New Deal project, Republicans were known to utter the phrase.

Handley began as a baritone singer and segued to comedy on stage and radio. In 1939, he developed the radio program, "ITMA." It lampooned people, places and things of the day that were reported in the news. There invariably was something about Herr Hitler. The names of characters, places and institutions were often plays on words or other funny concoctions.

Watching this film, one can't help it if an American comedy act of the same period comes to mind. Only Handley's character is the three top Marx Brothers rolled into one. His witty dialog and facial expressions, his funny ripostes with other characters and his frantic antics capture the personas of Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx.

This film also gives a hint of a type of comedy that would be popular in England three decades later. Non-stop, often unconnected or disconnected skits, running gags, and other comedy would become the trademark of Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969.

This film may not be to everyone's liking. Film buffs who must have a well-defined plot with a clear beginning and ending may be dismayed. Movie goers who look for the message or morale of a film may be disappointed. Those who insist on the sound elements of masterful movie-making will clearly be at a loss. But those who just like good comedy, madcap included, should enjoy this film. Besides the humor, it's a little bit of history as well.

All of the cast - again, many from the radio show, give fine performances. Indeed, for people of the war years on the home front, the film afforded an opportunity to put faces with the voices of those they heard regularly on the radio.

The Mayor of 'Foaming at the Mouth," England, had his day in English history. And the names of other ITMA characters are etched in the annals of British broadcasting - Sam Scram, Alley-Oop, Mrs. Mopp, Soso, Colonel Chinstrap and others.

Tommy Handley was supremely talented in rapid fire delivery and in making scripted humour sound spontaneous. Listening to his work on the Radio in ITMA or his work on record with Ronald Frankau (Murgatroyd and Winterbottom, or in earlier days North and South) you will marvel at the sheer speed of delivery matched to clarity of diction. He was a broadcast comedian who had started with the BBC as early as 1922 but it was with ITMA that he truly became a national icon. The problem with ITMA is that like most really good comedy it was very topical and what was recognised in 1943 might need research by 1948 to even understand. When translated to film radio comedy is doubly hampered by the need for a plot which a show that depended on catchphrases fast delivery and topical humour simply didn't need on its home turf. This applies to most radio comedy, as has been remarked on with the Goons, and films like Bandwaggon (where Big and Stinker... Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch.... end up running a pirate TV station). Yet ITMA holds up. Handley's character as the rascally mayor of Foaming at the Mouth is a joy to watch as he keeps extracting himself from trouble only to get caught with his own trick at the very end of the film. Don't like ancient radio comedy actors? Go watch something modern! But comparing the verbal dexterity of Tommy Handley to the slapstick antics of the Three Stooges? That's like comparing steak to sea bass... both delicious but nothing like each other.