Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Paul Evans Carry on Henry rates as one of the best of the Carry on Films, they couldn't really fail with this one. Henry VIII is still one of the most interesting and fascinating figures in British history, Sid James was one of our best loved Carry on actors, couple that with one of the best scripts and some rather good production values and you get this bawdy, funny Royal romp.Some of the costumes wouldn't have looked out of place in a BBC production of the tudors, some really are exceptional, I suppose there wouldn't have been quite so many heaving bosoms.Lots of the carry on regulars are on good form, being the lead I think it's fair to say the show is all about Sid, it's one of his best performances. Charles Hawtrey is also at his best as Sir Roger de Lodgerley, his his dialogues with Kenneth Williams and his torture scenes are hilarious.Brilliant film 9/10

TheLittleSongbird Carry on Henry is an entertaining enough entry in the comedy franchise, but I don't think it is as good as Carry on Cleo, Carry on Screaming or Carry On Up the Khyber. It is true that Talbot Rothwell's script isn't the sharpest one on the block, though there are some great one liners("it's all cock and no pea") and some priceless scenes, especially the ones with Barbara Windsor. Sid James is suitably merry as the monarch of the title, and Kenneth Williams is hilarious as always. Barbara Windsor looked lovely and also gives a very funny performance. The direction and photography have little fault, perhaps a little leisurely with the former, likewise with the scenery and costumes which were both very nice. However while there is evidence of making the jokes funny, the plot isn't as impressive, it had a tendency to become slow and unfocused. Still it is very enjoyable, so I will give it a 7/10. Bethany Cox

crossbow0106 This farce about Henry the VIII is perfect fodder for the Carry On group. This film has the core cast which made the best Carry Ons. It stars the irrepressible Sid James as the king, along with the always fun to watch Kenneth Williams as Cromwell. That duo made the best Carry Ons, they just seemed to always work well together. Add in the always welcome Joan Sims, the always bubbly Barbara Windsor and the also welcome Charles Hawtrey as Sir Roger and you know you're going to enjoy this. There have been better Carry On films, and the film carries the usual sexual innuendos and once in a while too cheap laughs, but with this cast it hardly matters. Seek this out.

alice liddell For most spoofs, the holy grail is to make so ridiculous the subject of attack that it will be impossible to take it seriously again. AIRPLANE! achieved this with the AIRPORT series, admittedly an easy target. CARRY ON HENRY may not have had quite the same effect - such is the unshakeable British obsession with the past, one of the film's main targets - but it's always nice to see that someone else found A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS and THE LION IN WINTER to be pompous tripe as well.HENRY, like CARRY ON UP THE KHYBER, is an example of a modest franchise miraculously finding an appropriate subject and creating a work of art. It may lack the jawdropping Bunuellian genius of KHYBER, but it has its own juicy pleasures. The jokes are franker than were usual at this point, but clever rather than crude, and funny when they were crude.This is also the last time the cast would be as brilliant as this - a well-oiled machine perfectly in control of the material. Kenneth Williams is aptly, hilariously Machiavellian; Charles Hawtrey is endearingly inappropriate as the brave knight and lover who undergoes all sorts of horrible tortures for his Queen - the heterosexual potency of these obviously gay stars are an uproarious counterpoint to the macho King's unsuccessful promiscuity. Joan Sims is glorious as ever as the ample, lascivious, French, garlic-obsessed Queen. But it is the godlike Sid James who rightly walks away with the film, cinema's best ever King Henry. The merging of his usual persona - the chuckling lecher who is repeatedly thwarted in his amorous endeavours (itself a remarkable comment of tyranny throughout the ages), married to a sex-mad woman he can't abide - with the portrayal of an historical icon creates satire of great depth.Whereas the aforementined, Oscar-garlanded pageants are rigidly respectful of English history, HENRY is breezily sceptical. Rather than search for continuity with the past, or examine various notions of Englishness, HENRY is very modern in its rejection of a certain kind of history, the meticulous reconstruction of a mythic past that can teach us about the present. HENRY knows that the past can only be viewed through the prism of the present, that history is a fluid, ever vanishing, entity, always reinterpreted to each generation's needs. The film quite clearly sets out its stall of bogusnes - it is based on recently discovered documents by William Cobbler - only to show how unreliable our grasp of history is; how it's always told in somebody's vested interests, at the expense of someone else.The film therefore prefigures the awesome Monty Python deconstructions of the 70s, with jokes about the Labour government, and with King's wenches who demand payment before favours, and whose fathers complain about taxation. The reduction here of English history to an aristorcratic bedroom farce is a more profound insight than any 'serious' epic has ever managed.