That's Carry On!

That's Carry On is basically just a compilation of the films highlighting the best moments from them with an overview by Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor.

3/10: I can't rate it highly due to having not one good scene that hasn't been viewed before

This is not a documentary but a compilation of some of the best gags from the long running Carry On movie series. Introduced by Carry On veterans Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor, it takes you through what was then 28 films in the series. This is a fairly good way to get an idea of what the movies were, the slapstick, the double entendres, the silliness and sometimes crudeness, but like all compilations its missing some personal favorites. Its hard for you to go wrong to choose a film that had Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor and Charles Hawtrey in it, they are pretty much the best. I've not seen every Carry On film yet, but this is a good primer. Carry On!

This is rather a lackluster "Best Of" compilation overall; it takes a more-or-less chronological look at the series but then omits entirely the most recent effort up to that time i.e. CARRY ON ENGLAND (1976)! Linking material features stalwarts Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor mugging and witlessly chatting; however, no real discussion is made on how the series evolved to begin with…or, for that matter, any background given on individual performers.

Some of the series highlights are seen, to be sure – and Williams does single out his role in CARRY ON...UP THE KHYBER (1968; scenes from which open and close this film) as being his personal favorite – but, watched out of context, they just don't have the desired effect (even if several of them came from entries I viewed only recently)!

Well, hardly the best of.

If I were wanting to introduce someone to Carry On, I wouldn't recommend this. It wasn't full or complete.

For some reason it showed more of Carry On Camping and the Khyber one. I thought I was watching the actual movie of one of them, so much scene was being shown.

But there were great moments from other movies that weren't shown, which was a shame.

Williams and Windsor did dish out their dialogue in the connecting bits very well.

I especially liked Williams talking about how he would only listen to or work with someone who was clearly more intelligent than he, he worded it much better than that, and the clip from "Carry On Regardless" when he was walking the monkey was shown.

Altho I now stand at having only seen half the series, the first half, that is, I do think there was more to the Carry On movies than what this hilight reel states.

But I was disappointed that the theme music from the first five Carry Ons was dismissed with Cruising. What a pity.

No idea how that music would have sounded with "Carry On Cowboy" or "Carry on Screaming" but I think someone who was half creative could have figured something out.

Carry on.

Hunting through the archives in their local cinema, Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor dig out all the old classics and settled down to watch them while eating out of a hamper. The structure (as if to suggest there is one) involves them playing a few clips from each movie as they make regular quips in between. As always with the series, originality and production values were not always top of the agenda and so this idea was ripped off from the success of MGM's That's Entertainment so the Carry On producers were trying to get more money out of very little.

Of course some of the clips are funny but if you are a fan you'll have seen them all before and will actually enjoy the films themselves rather than just watching the clips (and this isn't aimed at fans then who is it aimed at?). Not all the movies were much good though and it reflects in the fact that many of the clips are not that funny either. The interruptions (as the credits say) by Williams and Windsor all feel very cheap and lacking in imagination – there is a fine line between witty innuendo and out & out crudity and they are way, way over that line here with a shed load of unimaginative and crude jokes around body parts, sex and going to the toilet. Of course this will not be too much of a shock to those who have seen any of the films but it is the way it is done here that put me off.

Of course being a clips show we can't pick which ones we one to watch and therefore are lumbered with a lot of poor material just to get to the better stuff (much like the series over all) so I'd say just cherry pick the films themselves; that way you can select the better films, ignore the lesser ones and you won't have to put up with some real sub-par crudity from Williams and Windsor in cheap, dated clothing, not ever really putting the effort into it at all.