Carry on Columbus

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.

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).

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.

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.

Carry On England. Carry On Emmannuelle. Two titles to strike fear into the hearts of many a film fan. The Carry Ons were never highbrow, but were always good fun, until the later years, when they became an embarrassment.

14 years later, Carry On Columbus took the UK by surprise. It's not nearly as good as the Carry On Classics (Cleo, Camping, Cabby, Khyber, Convenience, etc), but is far better than its two predecessors.

Jim Dale gives a valiant performance as Columbus, with a host of Carry On regulars in cameo roles (Jon Pertwee, June Whitfield, Leslie Phillips, etc) and even a couple in larger, supporting roles (Bernard Cribbins and, in his least-annoying Carry On performance, Jack Douglas). The main problem with the film, I feel, is that there are far too many characters. Dozens of speaking parts, blurring the film's focus and ensuring that the major characters get less screentime than they ought to. Some characters are completely wasted, others get lost in the crowd.

Much is made of the "alternative" comedians appearing in the film: the likes of Rik Mayall, Julian Clary, Peter Richardson, Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen, etc. I always feel Mayall is way over-the-top, in a film where most performances are more sedate and down to earth. The star is Julian Clary, who is a natural at delivering the smutty lines, and gets a Hawtreyesque "oh hello!" on his first appearance. Sara Crowe is a perfect Carry On dollybird: blonde and bosomy, but far more intelligent than the Carry On girls of yesteryear.

A few of the best jokes of any Carry On (the "sharks" scene with Jack Douglas and Rebecca Lacey is a beauty), and some nice ideas all round. It just needs a bit of rewriting and re-editing, and its' cast list halved!

Carry On Columbus is a perfectly good film. For a first draft.