Mach's nochmal, Columbus

Occasionally you will watch a film in which you struggle to find any redeeming qualities. Carry On Columbus is such a film. It wasn't so much that the humour was dated, in 1992 I can still laugh at 95% of the Carry Ons, it was so badly executed and the casting was so misplaced. If your a Carry On fan it is nice to see some of the originals still in 1992 around to give it a go. Jim Dale, Jack Douglas. June Whitfield, Leslie Philips , Bernard Cribbins, Jon Pertwee andPeter Gilmore being the remnants of this British institution. The rest of the cast are the then cream of TVs alternative comedy, what a waste. 2/10.

Christopher Columbus, with the help of the Spanish queen, gets on board to discover India. He does America instead, that is full of tricky aborigines.

A foolhardy and predictably doomed attempt to get recovered a formula that worn out its date twenty years ago. The once-individual humour of double entendres, sex-overdose and sheer crudity, which has always depended very much on taste, no longer raises even chuckles. Tired antics of a loosely assembled new cast helps no more than the insignificant minority of once-regulars (Jim Dale, June Whitfield, Bernard Cribbins, Jon Pertwee, Leslie Phillips, Jack Douglas, Peter Gilmore).

The original Carry On series has a certain kitsch charm. They were smutty, low budget attempts to appeal to the masses, which broadly succeeded in putting a smile on the nation's face. Great casts of talented comic actors such as Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey and Barbara Windsor gave their all to leave a superb record of the humour of the time. Fourteen years after the original series drew to a close, largely because it was no longer relevant to the country, someone got the bright idea to revive the tradition. I can almost hear the smug conversations as the likes of Julian Clary and Rik Mayall decided to undertake what they thought would be a simple project. How miserably they failed. It is an execrable, ill conceived and poorly executed film, the only purpose of which is to illustrate the quality of the originals.

We often bemoan the demise of the British film industry, yet we seem to be almost incapable of turning out any decent films with the resources we have.

Absolutely terrible and embarrassing. Cheap looking and shameful. How did this atrocity ever see the light of day? What a disgrace to the Carry On name.

Don't get me wrong, I really like the Carry On franchise, but along with England and Emmanuelle, this movie is down there with the worst of them. Sorry I didn't like it, in fact I thought it was woeful. There was such a lot wrong with it, and not much good with it. The story is incoherent, the dialogue ranges to bad to horrendous, the gags are poor, the pacing is all over the place, the direction is non-existent the sets and costumes are somewhat cheap and the acting was poor. Leslie Phillips and June Whitfield are wasted, Bernard Cribbins is unusually bland and Julian Clary(???) only adds to the problem in an excruciatingly embarrassing turn as Don Juan Diego. In fact, the only redeeming quality is Jim Dale, who actually tries to do something with his role. Overall, dreadful and one of the worst. 1/10 Bethany Cox