Misfiring Carry On (the 'Carry On' name was dropped during a spat with a distributor), with plenty of good moments that don't quite add up to a top-rank whole. The plot leans heavily on Barry K. Barnes' 1937 offering The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel, with Sid James in the Barnes role, Jim Dale in Anthony Bushell's, Kenneth Williams in Francis Lister's, Joan Sims in Margaretta Scott's, Charles Hawtrey in O. B. Clarence's, and Dany Robin in Sophie Stewart's. Most of them have a great time, especially Williams, Sims and Hawtrey, while Sid James dominates the plot.
Jim Dale has a thankless unmemorable supporting role, and the wheeze of casting a sexy French actress (her career was drawing to a close at this point), like that of casting Phil Silvers in the previous entry Follow That Camel, was a mistake, failing to generate international interest while diluting the very English comedy. Like Silvers, Robin wanders through the film gamely with a strong sense that she has no idea what is really happening, but, hey, a job's a job.
Plenty of good moments and lines, usually delivered by Hawtrey or Sims ("Come my dear, shall we take a walk in the arbour?" "Oh, I 'ad no idea we were so close to the sea"), and lots of great character names and puns, while Williams' sharp intakes of breath get more and more exaggerated as the film goes on. Watch out for a good ad lib from Williams when Peter Butterworth accidentally knocks his hat off. There is a strong sense that the English may be less stylish and clever than the French, but they are more easygoing and fun, and generally better - in a strong tradition of lampoons of Napoleon and French centralisation that also reaches forward to the Brexit debate.
But the plot is quite tiresome, and the climax, with a huge sword fight in which various stuntmen gradually ruin Camembert's ill-gotten art collection is extraordinarily tedious. Moments stay in the memory, but the film as a whole does not.
