Carry on 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).

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.

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.

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.

I've had a real terror fest, I've watched some true horrors, Carry on England, Carry on Emmanuelle and ended with Carry on Columbus. I've said it before, they should have stopped at the brilliant Carry on behind.

It's better then the previous two, but that's not saying much, Carry on for me conjures up Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques, Bernard Bresslaw and Joan Sims. Four couldn't do it and one had the sense not to. So the film is just lacking what it is to be a Carry of film, I'll give plaudits to Jim Dale for battling hard against the awful script he was given.

I've tried to pick out a good bit, I've tried very hard, but I can't find one in there, it's too forced.

I applaud them for trying to continue the line, and for forming a 'new' batch of British comics, sadly it just didn't quite work. 3/10