Carry on Henry (1971) - film review

King Henry VIII is having a bad heir day.  When his present queen fails to provide him with a male offspring, he has her beheaded and takes Marie of Normandy as his new bride.  The King’s loyal advisers,  Thomas Cromwell and Cardinal Wolsey, are hopeful that the union will improve relations with France and are therefore understandably miffed when Henry immediately asks for the marriage to be dissolved.  The cause of the marital rift?  Marie likes garlic, not just in all her meals, but as a prenuptial snack.  Wolsey persuades the fuming King that the Pope is unlikely to grant an annulment for such a trivial offence but fortunately Sir Roger de Lodgerley, the royal food taster, provides more reasonable grounds for divorce when he gets Marie pregnant.  When Henry learns that he will lose a huge dowry provided by the King of France, he suddenly sees that Marie has one or two good points and decides to keep her on.  But then he meets Bettina, the most beautiful woman he has ever set eyes on.  Marie has got to go...

The twenty-first entry in the popular Carry On series is one of the most visually impressive, with production values to rival any pukka period drama of the time.  Despite being made on a miniscule budget  (around £230 thousand, the largest for any Carry On up until this point), it looks stunning, thanks to Alan Hume’s cinematography and Lionel Couch’s art direction, not to mention the costumes, which achieve an authentic recreation of the court of England’s most notorious monarch.

In all other respects, Carry On Henry is a typical knockabout Carry On, offering the familiar mix of bawdy humour and slapstick that audiences loved.  Screenwriter Talbot Rothwell clearly had great fun wringing mirth out of historical fact (whilst including a few wicked anachronisms to irritate the Guardian-reading pedants).  Regrettably, by this stage Rothwell’s jokes were beginning to lose their shine, not surprising as most of them had been done to death in the previous Carry Ons.

The gags may be dangerously past their sell-by date but the regulars still manage to get the laughs by the cartload.  Sid James will, for many people, be the definitive Henry VIII – he looks the part and turns in what is easily one of the best performances of his career.  It is fun watching Kenneth Williams drop in and out of character, even if he manages to avoid the outrageous camp excesses of earlier films.  Talking of camp, Charles Hawtrey gives another memorable turn as a Tudor fop, turn being the operative word as here he plays a lady’s man, sparking wonderfully off Joan Sims (who, for once, gets the full glamour treatment).

Barbara Windsor cites her role as the buxom Bettina as her favourite; she certainly looks stunning and her on-screen chemistry with Sid James in this film is electrifying (just a hint of the start of their off-screen romance).  As ever, there are also some magnificent contributions from the talented supporting cast, notably Terry Scott and Peter Gilmore.  Carry On Henry doesn’t quite match up to the previous historical Carry Ons, but it is nonetheless good clean fun, superbly made and enjoyably performed, avoiding the tacky vulgarity and silliness that would mar the later entries in the series.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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