The film opened at the New Gallery cinema in London on 31 July 1944, less than two months after D-Day and almost a year before the war would end in Europe. Film reviewers at the time were not very impressed - "The Times" reviewer found it to be ""a film which opens well [but] ends not with the bang of vigorous cinematic invention but the whimper of overworked dialogue"." - but more recently the film has been described by one reviewer as "one of the most delightful comedies ever made". Phil Hardy's "The Aurum Film Encyclopedia" classed the film as a utopian science fiction film but also claimed that "Vic Olivier" was the hotelier.