User reviews

2 years out of medical school now, Dr. Simon Sparrow takes a post as a ship's doctor to escape the not-so-good intentions of an amorous female friend. His post is on a cargo ship, so there's no girls aboard! Naturally this all changes when they acquire two female passengers, one being, as it would happen, Miss Bardot. Pretty predictable after that, but there are some good laughs and a lot of fun, though it's not as good as Doctor In The House. The hilarious James Robertson Justice is here again, though in a different role to the last movie, but it's a huge shame that the delightful Muriel Pavlow is missing from the cast! Considering Bogarde ended up with her at the end of the last movie, it's curious where her character seems to have gotten to; she doesn't even garner a mention from him at the start of the film. At least she appears to be in the further sequels.

7/10 - Pavlow over Bardot any day!

Although Dirk Bogarde at this stage of his career was looking for meatier dramatic roles, like Sean Connery for a time he was cast as the likable if sometimes ineffectual Dr. Simon Sparrow for a series of films of which this is the second one. They were moneymakers for the Rank Organisation to be sure and Bogarde got a lot of popularity from them.

After that first film in which he completes his residency, Dr. Sparrow sets up his practice. But when he's both called on to do the work of his older colleague and resist the amorous advances of his less than tempting daughter, Bogarde decides to get away from it all. What better than to take a birth as a ship's doctor on a cargo freighter that does have some passenger accommodations.

Of course when he gets on the HMS Lotus he finds that it's like he never left the United Kingdom when he discovers that the captain is none other than James Robertson Justice. JRJ played the head of the hospital in the first Dr. Sparrow film and was the bane of Bogarde's existence. He's playing the same kind of tyrannical character in this film as the captain from the Bligh School of Command. Or better yet JRJ is like Captain Morton from Mister Roberts.

The compensation is that on the return voyage Brigitte Bardot is a passenger. But on the voyage going and coming back is the daughter of the ship's owner Brenda DaBanzie and she's setting a romantic cap for for the Captain the kind that Bogarde ran to sea to get away from.

Bogarde is shy and sweet and sometimes ineffectual, but he does come through in several of the crises aboard ship. The film holds up well still for today's audience.

The second in the popular British comedy series already shows signs of flagging from the class evident in the original film. For one thing, the change of setting proves a bit of a quandary: it both opens up and cramps the jokes (while generally ship-bound, we do get a stretch on dry land – which sees the hero first involved with a drunken blonde and falling foul of her father and then put to jail for being 'under the influence' himself!).

Incidentally, while Dirk Bogarde reprises his role of Simon Sparrow, both James Robertson Justice and George Coulouris (who were also in DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE [1954]) play new characters here – the former's gruffness, while amusing at first, borders on caricature eventually; similarly, Brenda de Banzie's middle-aged passenger (pampered daughter of the seafaring company's President) is somewhat over bearing, evoking memories of Kay Walsh in an episode from the portmanteau film TRIO (1950). Bogarde's love interest, then, is rather incongruously filled by Brigitte Bardot – who's undeniably attractive but not yet the sex symbol of subsequent repute (although she does get to be seen taking a shower at one point).

Gags and innuendo sometimes approach the broad humor one normally associates with the rival "Carry On" series (which was actually still three years away from its inception) and CARRY ON CRUISING (1962) in particular (both films, in fact, culminated in a party on deck which ends in disaster).

One year after the highly successful 'Doctor In The House', Bogarde is back as the hapless medic Doctor Simon Sparrow. Unusually, 'St Swithins' is nowhere to be seen, neither are most of the supporting from the first movie. Even the great James Robertson Justice is playing a different character (a 'Doctor' movie without Sir Lancelot? Unthinkable!)

That said, it's pretty much business as usual, as Doctor Sparrow runs away to sea and gets himself involved in several embarrassing situations, while James Robertson Justice roars and blusters as Captain Hogg.

One shapely distraction is none other than Brigitte Bardot, in her first English-speaking role. A shower scene especially raises our hero's temperature!

Veteran actor Maurice Denham makes the most of a supporting role, while familiar British faces fill out the rest of the cast.

While not as good as the first movie, it never outstays it's welcome and is good fun.

Dirk Bogarde reprises his role of Dr. Simon Sparrow in "Doctor at Sea," a 1955 film that is the second in the "Doctor" series. James Robertson Justice is on hand in a different role, that if a ship's captain.

Simon, on the run from a friend's daughter who is mad for him, takes a job on a ship where there are no women. He's kept pretty busy with the irascible captain, a member of the crew with the DTs, and other assorted difficulties.

While stopped at a port, the ship acquires the owner's daughter (Brenda de Banzie) and a cabaret singer (Brigitte Bardot) - and the ship no longer has no women!

This is very light entertainment, with Bardot is as gorgeous as she is adorable with short brown hair, an infectious personality and that stunning figure. Justice gives his usual bombastic, fun performance, and the young Bogarde is very handsome and, while never known for his comedy, handles the fare here well.

These Doctor films made him a superstar and the biggest money-maker at Rank for quite a while. He loved working with Bardot.

For some background on Bogarde and how the Doctor films came about, I recommend the John Coldstream bio of Bogarde and/or Dirk Bogarde: Rank Outsider by Sheridan Morley, which makes for very lively, fun reading.

The late Richard Gordon was one of those authors who outlived his fame. In the fifties, sixties and seventies his "Doctor" books, comic novels set in the world of medicine, were immensely popular and the subject of many cinema and television adaptations, but by the time he died in 2017 he was a largely forgotten figure. "Doctor at Sea", based on one of those novels, follows the fortunes of a young doctor, Simon Sparrow who, to avoid the amorous attentions of a young woman he has no interest in marrying, signs on as ship's doctor on board a cargo ship plying between Britain and South America.

There were a total of seven films in the "Doctor" series, of which this was the second. The first film, "Doctor in the House", had introduced James Robertson Justice as the overbearing, autocratic surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt. Because of the nautical setting Spratt could not be used as a character in this film, but someone obviously though that Justice was too good to waste, so he returns as the overbearing, autocratic ship's captain, Wentworth Hogg. Brigitte Bardot makes her first appearance in an English-language film as Sparrow's love-interest Helene, an attractive young French passenger. Someone thought that the film should be a double romance, because a love-interest is also provided for Hogg in the shape of Helene's travelling companion Muriel.

Dirk Bogarde as Dr Sparrow was supposedly playing the lead character, but he seemed more like a straight man to Justice's monstrous captain, and Justice, when in his overbearing/autocratic mode, can be very much an acquired taste. (The Hogg/Muriel romance never seems convincing, given Hogg's misogynistic attitudes and fiery temper). Bardot came up against the same problem which would confront her in her future English-language movies like "Viva Maria!" or "Shalako". A fine actress in her native language, she never learned to speak English with any fluency and could never act in it with any conviction. It is a long time since I last read any of Gordon's "Doctor" books, but from what I can remember they were sharp and funny. That is not, however, a description I could use of this film, which struck me as rather dull, and, at best, only fitfully amusing. 5/10

It's often said of films with medical themes by the team of producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas that they're "Carry On's in all but name". Well this is a 'Doctor' film in name only.

Like countless British films of the fifties - when foreign travel it was considered incredibly glamorous - it provides a talky and mainly studio-bound economy class trip to an adjacent set peopled with worldly supposedly foreign trollopes. It's sole claim to fame today is the presence of an unrecognisably young Brigitte Bardot in what remained a very rare English-speaking role; whose French accent ironically sounds just as phoney as that adopted by the other young woman in the film.

Among all of the film accomplishment of Dirk Bogarde, this one I can readily state is his least convincing. He has played many parts all of which stem from his fabulous ability to act mostly men of authority. In this story he is a new doctor driven to sea due to the unwanted advances of an unattractive daughter of his former employer. Signing on as a Ship's doctor, he realizes it's filled with men who are in their own way trying to escape life's problems. Nevertheless, it's interesting work and he's soon out to sea and away from his own home. That's when he learns of the ship's crew and his ability to sort them out one by one. The Captain (James Robertson Justice) is a tyrant at sea and like the rest of the crew proves to be a complex figure, To complicate things, the ship's owner insists one of his daughters and her companion travel on his ship with the Bachelor Captain. Thus Dirk Bogarde tries to do his best to entertain in more than one way. As a result, the audience is enthralled by him and the rest of the strange crew. However it's an interesting movie and one which generates many smiles. Brigitte Bardot and James Robertson Justice add to the fun. ***

An average, very English fifties comedy, set on a freight ship.

Nevertheless this movie offers two outstanding dimensions: the first is leading man Dirk Bogarde, who plays with his usual excellence.

The second is Brigitte Bardot, adding much charm by her English-with-a-French-accent.

By the way, the English film crew did a magnificent job on Brigitte: out of the many thousand of shots spanning her entire career, those from 'Doctor at Sea' are among the very best. For this reason alone it is really worth watching this movie.

The Rank Organisation was quick to capitalise on the unexpected popularity of "Doctor in the House" by releasing this seaborne sequel, which proved to be just as successful at the box-office. Dirk Bogarde reprised his earlier leading role as the handsome and well-meaning if put-upon Dr Simon Sparrow, although I would hesitate to call him intelligent especially as he can't recognise the obvious doppelgangers in his midst in the shapes of James Robertson-Justice, Noel Purcell and Joan Sims amongst others who were "in the house" with him before under different disguises.

To escape his landlord's daughter Sims' very obvious advances, he takes the rather extreme step of becoming a ship's doctor under the severe command of Robertson Justice's officious captain. Naturally, there has to be female interest on the boat, no women, no movie, I guess, which duly arrives in the shape of the shipping line owner's middle-aged man-eating daughter, who points her compass at Robertson-Justice and her companion, a young Brigitte Bardot who likewise sets sail for Bogarde.

Over ninety rather choppy minutes, we're served up some rather predictable occasionally suggestive and sexist humour, from which one can easily predict the later success of the even more low-brow "Carry On" films of the 60's.

Personally, I just found the movie to be a lot less humorous than its predecessor. To paraphrase the old song, all the sailors appear to love a nice girl with the camera lingering on the nubile form of Bardot and there's even a scene with one tar in his bed poring over a magazine containing 3D pictures of the then current British sex-symbol Diana Dors. Worst of all, we briefly follow around one of the ship's company at an evening party who carries around with him an alcoholic concoction he plans to administer to render unsuspecting girls helpless, which today we'd call spiking their drinks.

Other supposedly comedic episodes are played out while the boat is in port and at sea but none of them are very funny so that long before the end, I'd run up the white flag on this rather predictable and stereotypical comedy which really wasn't a patch on the freshness of the original.

'Doctor at sea' is your average English fifties-comedy, as were turned out by the dozen at the time. Television was hardly around, so on Saturday nights the public crowded into their many local cinema-theaters to watch films like these.

Although overall acting in 'Doctor at sea' is pretty competent, it's clear that this film only escaped a thick layer of dust for one single reason: Brigitte Bardot's participation.

Even stronger than that: Brigitte's picturing in this film surely ranks among the very best in her entire career. More than half a century after its production, one can safely conclude that the British did a great job on her.

That's nearly all there is to say about this light comedy. Apart from Brigitte Bardot, the performance of young Dirk Bogarde as the ship's doctor deserves a mentioning, too.

A fairly faithful rendition of Richard Gordon's semi-biographical novel of the same name. The characters are "right", the episodic nature of the story follows, even if loosely, the basic form of the novel. The "south American Port" is an amalgam of Santos and Buenos Aires, and is pretty accurate for those places in the 1950's. The relationships between the officers, crew, and the general milieu is also very accurate. There are some superb scenes, my absolute favourite being the logging (the Merchant Navy version of a disciplinary hearing) which is both accurate and very funny. As many reviewers have already pointed out, it is a cargo ship, not a cruise ship, and the passengers are actually guests of the company. Finally, it is SS Lotus, a merchant vessel, not HMS.

Fresh from his training and having gotten into women trouble in his dogsbody job as a junior doctor in a surgery, Dr Simon Sparrow runs away to sea, joining a cargo ship as the medical officer. Immediately finding that he is prone to seasickness, Sparrow has to content with all manner of colourful characters – the crew of a cargo ship not being the most stable of places for people to spend their time. Things are rough enough but when they stop in a port for some shore leave, the ship picks up a couple of female passengers – making live on the ship before look calm and peaceful by way of comparison.

Still containing the light farce and japes that the Carry On series still had in the early 1950's, the Doctor series continues with its second entry and just some predictable jokes and plots. Shoehorned out to sea, the narrative mixes some medical joking and a fairly plodding plot about nautical flirting (although never approaching what you could call innuendo). It is good-natured enough but never feels like it gets out of second gear – crawling along without any risk of doing anything that well or ever picking up a bit of speed. Without any laughs or enjoyable sequences the film does just come off as rather bland but I suppose it may still have enough about it to appeal to those just looking for an old film to watch on a wet weekend afternoon.

Bogarde doesn't really help things in my opinion; he is bland himself and he doesn't add anything to the comedy or romantic sides of the material. His support cast aren't much better although Bardot's singsong accent and pretty shape is easy on the eye, meanwhile Justice and Sims are really the only easily well-known faces involved. Overall then a fairly uninteresting film that treads a gentle comic path and rarely does anything that good or that bad – it is all pretty bland and average. Might do for those that like this sort of stuff while having a cup of tea during a wet Sunday afternoon but probably that's about it.

"Doctor at Sea" is the sequel to the popular "Doctor in the House",with Dirk Bogarde reprising his role as Dr. Simon Sparrow,now a newly qualified and overworked GP,who flees from the amorous advances of his Senior Partner's daughter. He decides to sign on as a ship's doctor and escape! Various amusing situations occur on the outward voyage,instigated by the vessel's somewhat eclectic crew. These range from the overbearing,bombastic Captain Hogg(James Robertson Justice),to the loopy,hallucinating ship's carpenter(George Coulouris). At their tropical Port of Call Simon encounters pretty club singer Helene: A young Brigitte Bardot managing to radiate modesty,charm and a kind of demure sexuality,all at the same time! Of course,Simon falls for her,and his affection increases when the misogynistic Captain Hogg is ordered to give return passage home to the daughter of the Shipping Line owner,Muriel(Brenda de Banzie),and her friend ...Helene! Muriel sets her sights on the irascible Captain,while Simon romances Helene(Lucky chap!). Other comic situations abound,including the Merchant ship's Dance,and Crewman Noel Purcell's dental visit. The film,although not having many real "Laugh-out-loud" moments,is constantly amusing. And BB does get to deliver one of the funniest lines after the crew present Dr. Sparrow with a caged bird,in thanks for his successful operation on one of the seamen. The viewer has to be quick,as the scene is faded just as Helene speaks her line!! The movie reaches it's zenith with Hogg growing even more cranky and cantankerous(Not entirely his fault), and with Helene and Simon's shipboard romance looking to be scuppered,as Helene now has a singing contract in Rio...But wait? Well played by Dirk Bogarde,James Robertson Justice,Brenda de Banzie and a radiant Brigitte Bardot,in her debut British film performance. There are several good cameo and supporting performances too,and the whole concoction is tidily directed by Rank stalwart Ralph Thomas. All in all an agreeable British movie.