Review of Carry on Doctor

More hospital hi-jinks from the Carry On gang (NURSE,AGAIN DOCTOR and MATRON are other examples from the series),DOCTOR has a very wispy and slim plot line (even for this series' standards),merely seeming to be a collection of brief sketches,but is still very enjoyable thanks to some good verbal and visual gags and performances.Mainstays like Sid James,Charles Hawtrey,Kenneth Williams and Hattie Jacques are on board,but the nominal male leads are the less regular mainstay Jim Dale and the great Frankie Howerd,making the first of his two appearances in a Carry On,with a pneumatic Barbara Windsor and a glamorous Anita Harris(another non-regular) in the main female roles. Howerd wasn't always a natural for the cinema,being happier delivering his rambling comic tales on the stage or TV rather than playing scripted characters in a movie,but this is one of the few occasions when his unique comic style successfully transferred to the big screen.Howerd's familiar cheesed-off,cynical,oohs and aahs persona is amusingly exploited here,and Frankie delivers some priceless one-liners and slapstick incident;Frankie's performance gives DOCTOR an extra added quality that it doesn't particularly have,and wouldn't have had,if he wasn't present.Dale also raises some laughs as the hopelessly gauche and clumsy Doctor Kilmore,and regulars like James,Williams,Jacques,Hawtrey,Joan Sims,Bernard Bresslaw and Peter Butterworth are adequate but unusually relegated to fairly secondary roles for once.Good cameos from familiar faces like Brian Wilde,Dandy Nichols,Peter Jones and Gordon Rollings add to the fun.

The Carry On's were never much concerned with cinematic artifice or subtle humour,but for those who simply want to watch an ensemble cast of talented comic performers do their thing,CARRY ON DOCTOR perfectly serves it's purpose.

RATING:6 and a half out of 10.