Review of Carry on Again Doctor

I'd have been 6 months old when this came out! It doesn't need me to explain the plot, plenty of reviews have done that. Besides you don't really need a plot to understand the humour. Watch one Carry On and you've seen them all. Babs gets her buns out, Kenneth says, Maaaatron to Hattie Jacques and flares his nostrils a lot, Charles drags up. There are jokes taking the mickey out of gay men (not exactly homophobic but rather tired, even by 1969 standards). I'm not sure how well the sex change serum joke would go down nowadays. I'm one of the LGBT community and although I deplore homophobia and transphobia- and fat shaming too - I take Carry On films with a generous pinch of salt. I'm not averse to making the odd smutty joke, and in 2024, no one's exactly forcing me to watch it! There are more diverse, inclusive comedies nowadays, of course, but Carry Ons are pretty harmless. A couple of trivial points: Sid James is top of the bill, but in Carry On Again Doctor, it's roughly half an hour before you even glimpse him. The rest of the main cast have far more work to do than he does.

Sid had a reputation for taking back-handers from companies, esp whiskey and fag brands. In COAD, there's a cupboard full of whiskey. Doubtless a placement engineered by James as a bit of advertising. To me, not fond of whiskey and 5 decades on, I don't recognise the brand, but I'm sure plenty of folks back then would've. There are also Rothman and Embassy No5 cigarettes if I'm not mistaken.

Anyway, there are worse Carry Ons and there are better. Any of the Black and Whites beat this one.