Mach's nochmal, Columbus

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).

This film is the biggest pile of doosh, it's been my misfortune to endure, I love the carry on films, and because I do, I have problems even accepting this pityful movies exsistence.

Barbara Windsor and Joan Sims did the wise thing and refused to have anything to do with this debarcle. To include so called modern comics such as Rik Mayell, Alexi Sayle etc is an insult to the Carry on name.

A movie HAS to be bad if the normally grotesque Julian Clarey, gives me the only chuckle of the film. The only 'true' Carry on regular in this movie was Jim Dale (and Peter Gilmore at a push). June Whitfield, Leslie Phillips, Jack Douglas & Bernard Cribbins, all made only a handful of appearances in the series, and do themselves no favours appearing in this arsefest. Lets put this into perspective.

Sid James is Dead, Kenneth Williams is Dead, Kenneth Connor is Dead, Charles Hawtrey is Dead, Hattie Jacques is Dead, Peter Butterworth is Dead, Joan Sims is Dead, Barbara Windsor is Dead, Bernard Bresslaw is Dead.

These people WERE the Carry on movies, it was their magic and their comedic timing and delivery that made these films charming. Not because they were 'Carry on Films' but because THEY were in them, and it is the rapport they had as a working team, that made that 'Carry On' magic. This film was nothing more than ghostriding.

And if this movie wasn't damaging enough to the 'Carry On' name, then I'm sure you'll all be sickened to hear that they're planning to make another. I hope more intelligent heads prevail and we are spared such an indignity.

For twenty five years I have carried this film around as a pre-prepared answer to any question which includes the words "worst film". Of course I have seen worse films on TV at strange hours of the afternoon or early morning, but I have neither watched them in their entirety nor handed over my own hard-earned cash to see them. I reserve scores of one out of ten for some of those movies, and this one merits a score of two purely because I did manage to endure it all.

This film is a tragic waste of the talent assembed to produce it. I'm not sure whether it's the script, the editing, the direction or all three which conspired to make it so bad but it's almost an achievement in itself that so many fine comedy actors were employed in pursuit of such a lost cause.

The Carry On franchise was never intended to be thought-provoking but it's irreverence and cheekiness evoked a more innocent time which, while it may not have really been as innocent as it made out, was well and truly over by the time Columbus hit our theatres. Even with those qualities intact it would have been fairly excruciating in 1992, but it wasn't even that good. It isn't so much of an anachronism as an embarrassment and I'll bet there were a few tense conversations between actors and agents in the period following its release.

1992 was the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing on American soil and there were three prominent movies made to cash in on this - 1492, Conquest of Paradise and the film generally regarded as the most historically accurate of the three, Carry On Columbus. They were all crap I think, with the Carry On one being voted the worst British film ever made in 2004 by film professionals. Its not entirely unfair, as it really is a hopeless pile of garbage. It makes Cannon and Ball's Boys in Blue appear like Police Academy and the other Carry On films appear...better. The script is dreadful and the acting performances dire. It truly is alternative comedy, i.e. An alternative TO comedy. So, hop onboard the good ship Asinine on its voyage to the laughter-free zone.

The 'Carry Ons' had been wound up - to very little fanfare - nearly fifteen years before Carry On Columbus was released back in 1992. I was in high school then and I remember it vaguely; along with most contemporary audiences at the time, I certainly made no effort to actually watch a Carry On film in the cinema. Followng a dismal run Carry On Columbus soon faded at the box office , and it's only thanks to ITV 4 that I've gotten the chance to occasionally watch it over recent years.

The storyline - a take on Christopher Columbus and The New World, in case you missed the hint - is stale and lifeless. Too many of the performances are forced, and the timing and delivery - always essentially in a Carry On film - just isn't there; if the 'magic' that existed between James, Jacques, Butterworth, Connor, Williams, Windsor, et al (despite whatever else was going on behind the scenes) was spent by 'Emmannuelle' then it was unlikely it was going to be rekindled in the early Nineties - particularly with a group of actors and comedians from a very different background.

This was at the heart of Columbus's failure - the Alternative Comedian of the 1980s was extremely critical (often with good justification) of their 'traditional', 'music hall' or 'old fashioned' predecessors; and when they got their own chance on the silver screen their big shot was yet another Carry On film...it was no wonder they struggled to adapt to the 'seaside postcard' style they'd spent nearly a decade disparaging. By trying to reinvent a sanitised version, and underestimating or misunderstanding the job in hand, the Alternatives surgically removed the essence of what made the series such a success in the first place - even if realities were a bit more hit and miss than the myth suggests. Peter Rogers takes his share of blame as well - if the same formula was well passed its sell by date in 1978 (or 1976 if count 'Dick' as the last decent entry) did he really expect a different result in 1992?

With one or two exemptions (notably Jim Dale and Sara Crowe) most of the cast look all at sea here - and not in the way Colombus would have liked. It says much about low expectations that people can say this is better than the last two or three entries is a plus point - I'd say it was a necessity! Not the worst but it's near the bottom of the league, and one for the completionists only.