Time Flies is a 1944 British comedy film in which four modern people travel back in time to Elizabethan England. It is notable as one of the earliest films to feature a
Time Machine.
This film provides examples of:
- A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": Pre-rock version. The main characters wow the Elizabethans with 1940s Jazz.
- Anachronism Stew: Walter Raleigh hasn't been knighted yet, which places the setting in 1585 or earlier, but the film isn't consistent about that:
- Love's Labour's Lost is being performed, and William Shakespeare is writing Romeo and Juliet. Neither of those things happened until the 1590s.
- In 1585, John Smith was five years old, and Pocahontas wouldn't be born for another ten years or so. Both are portrayed as adults. Indeed, Pocahontas should not even be in Elizabethan England, since her visit to England did not take place until well into the reign of James VI and I.
- Artificial Gravity: The Professor budget-savingly activates this shortly after they get to space.
- Artistic License – Space: The view of the Earth from space shows a ringed planet, resembling Saturn, in the background. Neither Saturn nor any similar planet is that close to Earth.
- Puddle-Covering Chivalry: Tommy steals this moment from Walter Raleigh.
- Shout-Out: As the dates tick backwards:
- Time Machine: While many previous films featured Time Travel in some form, this was one of the first in which it's achieved by a machine. It's called the Time Ball, and it's a giant spherical craft that activates by flying into outer space. Incidentally, this means the movie's fictional protagonists beat Yuri Gagarin into space by almost twenty years. Or by more than three centuries, depending on your perspective.
- Time-Travelers Are Spies: The Professor is mistaken for a Scottish spy when he states that the Stuarts will succeed Elizabeth I.
- Tonto Talk: Pocahontas introduces herself by saying "how" as a greeting, and it goes from there.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: The altimeter measures height in increments of ten thousand miles, and the tenth increment is labeled as one million. Ten times ten thousand is a hundred thousand, not one million.
