FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Robert J. Maxwell I saw one or two of the earlier "Carry On" movies when they were first released and didn't remember them clearly except for one conversation involves Sid James. Someone remarks that Arabs are a very intense people, and James assumes this sardonic grin and replies, "Yes, the Arabs do everything in tents, don't they." On the basis of this one lousy but smile-worthy pun, I bought the entire boxed set of the "Carry On" series, each entry having its own audio commentary.I'm half way through the first example I've sampled -- "Carry On Doctor" -- and feel compelled to watch the whole 45 hours of the series, since I've already paid for them.But I do so with a heavy heart. The world has changed a great deal since I heard that pun about "tents" and it must have had its effect on my sense of humor. This is almost unbearable silly. Performers make feeble jokes, then turn to stare at the camera and cackle maniacally. It isn't the low-brow farcical quality of the gags that are depressing. It's that they're not funny.The actors do their best and there are some familiar faces among them -- Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Hattie Jacques -- but what can they do with such shoddy material? It's like a television situation comedy that has defied its natural death and meanly continues to run long after it's begun to decompose.Benny Hill was more inventive and funnier. Monty Python, compared to this, is elegant wit.I might have picked a bad example to start with. Maybe other episodes are better. I hope so. I don't look forward to slitting my wrists. At the same time, there seem to be many people who have found this series hilarious, so my values may have been warped by history.

TheLittleSongbird I have always liked/loved the Carry on movies, and this is no exception. I do agree that the story is thin, it is, but the humour and cast elevate it. The humour is very bawdy but it never ceases to be hilarious, whether in the script or the innuendos. The film looks pretty good too, the music is quirky, the direction is solid and the film goes along at a good pace. The cast are great as per usual, it was wonderful to see all of those I love. Sidney James, who was genuinely bedridden for much of the film is good still, while Kenneth Williams is very funny as the sneering consultant. Jim Dale is funny and charming as the clumsy Dr Kilmore and Frankie Howerd makes for an impressive series debut. But Charles Hawtrey steals the show as he experiences the pangs of a "sympathetic" pregnancy. Overall, a fun entry in the series. 8/10 Bethany Cox

MARIO GAUCI The second of four "Carry Ons" dealing with the medical establishment is certainly a comedown from the first – CARRY ON NURSE (1959), to which there is even an unsubtle reference at one point – if still quite tolerable and intermittently inspired. Amusingly, the film sports a barrage of fake alternate names – hence the full title shown on screen in the opening credits sequence is CARRY ON DOCTOR, OR NURSE CARRIES ON AGAIN OR, DEATH OF A DAFFODIL OR, LIFE IS A FOUR-LETTER WARD – A BEDPANORAMA OF HOSPITAL LIFE.Ironically, it was originally conceived as being the last of the series – hence the idea to return to the environment of their first true success for the swan song! Of course, the series not only lasted for another decade but produced some of their best (and very worst) entries during that twilight period. Furthermore, this was also intended as a closure to another long-running film comedy series – the "Doctor" films which had started with DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (1954) that were produced by "Carry On" producer Peter Rogers' own wife, Betty Box – which explains the portrait of a stalwart of that series, James Robertson Justice, finding itself hanging on the walls of the hospital in which this film is set! Apart from the fact that they returned to the present-day after half a dozen period pieces...er...genre spoofs, they also introduced other celebrities into the fold, most prominently Frankie Howerd (who is even top billed here). Usual "Carry On" lead Sidney James had suffered a heart attack before shooting began, and this probably necessitated the introduction of Howerd – as well as confining James' character mostly to a hospital bed practically for the film's whole duration! Most of the usual members of the gang are here: the afore-mentioned James (who is here nagged to distraction by wife Dandy Nichols), Kenneth Williams (the feared Dr. Tingle, who himself fears new recruit Windsor!), Charles Hawtrey (as a husband suffering the pregnancy pains felt by his wife?!), Joan Sims (as Howerd's devoted and practically deaf assistant), Hattie Jacques (as the matron who has the hots for Williams!), Barbara Windsor (the new nurse whose busomy figure and skimpy outfits gets every male patients' temperature to boiling point), Jim Dale (as Williams' amiably accident-prone 'rival') , Bernard Bresslaw (as the chap who underwent an appendectomy surgery but stayed on after breaking his leg from falling off the operating table!) and Peter Butterworth (quite wasted as another appendectomy patient); for whatever reason, one of the patients turns out to be The Invisible Man!As I said before, there is some good stuff in here mostly provided by Howerd (as a charlatan faith healer who injures his backside and misunderstands Williams' diagnosis as having a mere week to live!), Dale (his rooftop antics after misreading Windsor's intentions to sunbathe as a suicide attempt is one of the film's comic highlights) and Bresslaw (who keeps convincing his visiting friend to swap clothes with him so that he can go see an attractive but lonely patient in the women's ward). Even so, the film is definitely unbalanced by having two ultra-campy performers – Howerd and Williams – letting rip in it (which perhaps explains why the equally effeminate Hawtrey is atypically restrained here). Furthermore, the cruder aspects of the "Carry On" brand of humor, not to mention a more frenzied gag structure, have clearly started to take center stage here – to the eventual detriment of the genteel sophistication and genial characterizations displayed in earlier, better films like CARRY ON NURSE itself and CARRY ON TEACHER (1959).

BJJManchester 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.