Carry on Columbus (1992) - film review

The year is 1492.  When he learns that a young adventurer named Chrisopher Columbus intends sailing to the Indies, Abdul the Benevolent, the Sultan of Turkey, is sent into a panic.  Presently, he controls the overland trade routes to the Far East and if Columbus succeeds his nice little earner will be a thing of the past.  Anxious to know more he sends his faithful Fatima to contact his agent, the shoemaker Achmed, to begin spying on Columbus.   Meanwhile, Columbus is having troubles of his own.  Unless he can find someone to back his project, his ambitions will remain a pipe dream.  Fortunately, the King and Queen of Spain are in the mood for a bit of venture capitalism and agree to bankroll his expedition in return for ninety per cent of the wealth he brings back.   Columbus at last has a ship, The Santa Maria; now he must find a crew.  He ends up having to recruit convicts and undesirables, including Pepe the poisoner, Tonta the torch, Marco the cereal killer and Cecil the torturer.  Don Juan Diego, the prisoner governor, also decides to come along, to expand his horizons. Achmed and Fatima manage to find their way into Columbus’s crew, with the intention of sabotaging the mission.  After a long and eventful sea journey, The Santa Maria reaches land, but Columbus soon discovers he is not where he thinks he is.  His adventures have only just begun...

With 1992 marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, producer Peter Rogers saw a Heaven-sent opportunity to revive the Carry On films which he had created in the late 1950s and which had died a death with Carry On Emmannuelle in 1978.   The only problem was that most of the original cast of regulars were dead, along with the principal screenwriter Talbot Rothwell.  Still, there was plenty of fresh comic talent in the UK and surely it wouldn’t be that difficult to put together a team that would recapture the magic of the old Carry Ons?  Think again Mr Rogers.

After the initial hype, it soon became clear to all involved on the project that Carry On Columbus was destined to be the mother of all turkeys.  Jim Dale was the only surviving member of the original Carry On cast of regulars who agreed to appear in the film and he was unimpressed with the production from an early stage.  The old-school Carry On actors (Leslie Phillips, June Witfield, Jack Douglas) failed to hit it off with the new boys on the block, the alternative comedians (Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, Julian Clary), and the warm atmosphere that is so noticeable in the old Carry Ons is completely missing here.

The worse thing about this production is the script, which is so unbelievably dire that after this even Carry On Emmannuelle begins to look quite good.   Writer Dave Freeman, who had scripted the disappointing Carry On Behind (1975) and some truly risible episodes of the spin-off TV series Carry On Laughing, was given just ten days to write the script.  No surprise that what he sent in was undiluted crap that would offend the intelligence of a three-day old kitten.

It is easy to savage Carry On Columbus given the reputation it has earned but this really is a film that manages to fail at every level.  The jokes are appalling (not the subtle family-friendly slapstick and innuendo of the classic Carry Ons, but in-your-face vulgarity that was so prevalent in the early 1990s). The performances are without exception excruciatingly bad, the direction sloppy, the editing appalling.  No wonder the critics tore the film to shreds when it was first released: this is a film that has nothing to commend it.  This is the absolute nadir of British film comedy.   Yet in spite of all this the film still fared better at the box office than the other two (equally missable) films released in 1992 to celebrate the Columbus anniversary: Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise and John Glen’s Christopher Columbus: The Discovery.  Today, when asked about this film, most Carry On fans will look blankly and do a good impression of someone with selective amnesia.  Some things are best forgotten, and this is one of them.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?