Truly Dreadful Film
I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible
View MoreIt's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
View MoreThe film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
View MoreQuite weak and silly.Despite the title and containing at least four actors and actresses from it, not a sequel to Carry on Doctor. A young doctor, Dr Nookey (played by Jim Dale) suffers a professional disgrace and is sent to a remote island. There he discovers a tonic that causes rapid weight-loss, ideal for obese people. He goes back to England and makes a fortune off the treatment...One of the more silly Carry On movies, and certainly not as good as Carry on Doctor. Carry on Doctor had its fair share of slapstick, but also had some fairly clever jokes and was generally good fun. Carry on Again Doctor is much more low-brow. Too many nudge-nudge- wink-wink sort of jokes and silly, random scenes.Overall: not that funny and not worth watching.
View MoreFans of the original CARRY ON DOCTOR might well be forgiven for assuming that this rushed-out sequel offers more of exactly the same, and indeed for the first half of the production that's exactly the case. Once more, the setting of the film is a hospital, with Hattie Jacques as Matron and Kenneth Williams as a pompous doctor. It's all very warm and familiar, with most of the Carry On team present and correct. Once again, Jim Dale is the focus of the slapstick comedy, and there's also a meatier role for Charles Hawtrey who gets probably the most screen time of his Carry On career.So far, so predictable and yet so amusing - fans will be in their element with another assured, confident piece of film-making, packed with seaside postcard-style humour. And then at the halfway point things change; there are exotic locales and a surprisingly densely-plotted narrative involving a magical weight loss elixir. This all builds to an unpredictable climax with multiple factions attempting to get one over on each other; it's the most complex script-writing of the series since the early 1960s, and proved to be a great and welcome surprise for this fan.
View MoreThe 18th of the Carry On series and the third of the medical themed adventures, plot finds Jim Dale as Doctor Nookie, who is stitched up by his superiors and sent to a tropical Beautific island to tender medical treatment to the natives. What he actually finds when he gets there is a rainy windswept isle that has no need for his services at all. The compound is run by Gladstone Screwer (Sid James), a crafty old sort who deals in whisky and cigarettes and has a wife for every day of the week. Screwer also has something else of interest that perks up the flagging interest of Nookie, a potion that considerably aids weight loss. Nookie senses an opportunity to make a financial killing back in Blighty whilst simultaneously getting one over the superiors who had him sent to his island misery.This was the last of 10 Carry On films for Jim Dale before he returned for the ill conceived "modern" reinvention that was Carry On Columbus in 1992. I don't know if the makers knew that Dale would be leaving the series and thus made him the lead character in this jovial farce? But it proves to be a smart move. One of the unsung heroes of the series, Dale's energy and comic reactions to plot situations were always a joy to watch, and here, with James in customary wise cracking support, he lifts the film above the ordinary with a show of endearing buffoonery. He also did his own stunts and broke his arm on this production. Director Gerald Thomas keeps things brisk, with the double location axis of the plot stopping things from stagnating visually, Charles Hawtrey goes undercover in drag to provide the last third of the film with some quality laughs and the likes of Barbara Windsor and Valerie Leron raise the pulses considerably.Thin of plot but big on charm and laughs, one of the better Carry On movies. 7.5/10
View MoreBeing the third outing in the series to be set against a medical backdrop, I was fully expecting this to be a tired rehash of old gags and ideas; however, I found it quite an agreeable latter-day entry if still essentially second-tier material.The cast sees Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and Jim Dale in more or less similar roles as its predecessor CARRY ON DOCTOR (1967); on the other hand, Sid James, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey and Barbara Windsor play different characters. Also, the mid-section of the film reverts to a tropical island setting (to which Dale has been assigned as a punishment, and where wily orderly James is stationed though, even in such remote surroundings, he manages to keep up-to-date with English soccer results via coded drum-playing from the natives!).Some of the best gags involve Dale's accident-prone antics at the hospital early on (including his examination of scantily-clad starlet Windsor) and the latter stages set in Dale's private clinic (James has devised a concoction which turns out to be an effective slimming treatment subsequently exploited by Dale under the patronage of wealthy Sims), which also sees Hawtrey once again in drag (he's a doctor who's jealous of Dale and has infiltrated the clinic on a mission for Dale's ex-superior/now-rival Williams). Series regular Peter Butterworth only has one wacky scene; other bits highlight Wilfrid Brambell (uncredited as an eccentric patient), lovely Valerie Leon (as Dale's sultry secretary) and future Mrs. Michael Caine Shakira Baksh (as a native-girl who successfully undertakes James' miraculous cure).
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