This is one of those films I watch every few years and which seems funnier on every occasion. There are those who cannot connect with the Hancock of the TV shows, their grainy black and white images seemingly confirming him as a fixture from a period long ago, a world of men with cloth caps on football terraces, smoky pubs and adverts for Capstan Full Strength. Seeing him in colour in more glamorous surroundings can make him more relevant to a modern age, not least because the digs at a world of art, widely suspected as having its share of pseuds and hucksters, still ring true. These scenes came in for criticism for taking Hancock out of his usual context, but I find them among the most amusing viewed today. The film's only weakness is the encounter with the vivacious Margit Saad, though only because it is allowed to prolong.
Hancock was never going to attain the success he craved in the US of his day, because his comedy in whatever milieu, like that of his predecessor Will Hay, was essentially about failure, and in his case of being a social misfit in a specifically British context. With an excellent supporting cast, and first-rate script from the peerless Galton and Simpson, he proves again that if not exactly a genius, he was one of the most original and funniest comedy actors Britain has produced.
Hancock was never going to attain the success he craved in the US of his day, because his comedy in whatever milieu, like that of his predecessor Will Hay, was essentially about failure, and in his case of being a social misfit in a specifically British context. With an excellent supporting cast, and first-rate script from the peerless Galton and Simpson, he proves again that if not exactly a genius, he was one of the most original and funniest comedy actors Britain has produced.