NekoHomey
Purely Joyful Movie!
Marketic
It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.
Haven Kaycee
It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film
Phillipa
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
CosmicPrune
For twenty five years I have carried this film around as a pre-prepared answer to any question which includes the words "worst film". Of course I have seen worse films on TV at strange hours of the afternoon or early morning, but I have neither watched them in their entirety nor handed over my own hard-earned cash to see them. I reserve scores of one out of ten for some of those movies, and this one merits a score of two purely because I did manage to endure it all.This film is a tragic waste of the talent assembed to produce it. I'm not sure whether it's the script, the editing, the direction or all three which conspired to make it so bad but it's almost an achievement in itself that so many fine comedy actors were employed in pursuit of such a lost cause. The Carry On franchise was never intended to be thought-provoking but it's irreverence and cheekiness evoked a more innocent time which, while it may not have really been as innocent as it made out, was well and truly over by the time Columbus hit our theatres. Even with those qualities intact it would have been fairly excruciating in 1992, but it wasn't even that good. It isn't so much of an anachronism as an embarrassment and I'll bet there were a few tense conversations between actors and agents in the period following its release.
Eric Stevenson
I guess I should probably mention some backstory on this film series. The "Carry On" series was a long running British movie franchise that started in the 1950's and (as best to my knowledge) featured unrelated comedies with the same actors. Sound familiar? It would be easy to say that this was just a Monty Python wannabe...except that it actually came out before Monty Python. It doesn't matter, because Monty Python is by far the superior series. I didn't know much about these films other than that they made jokes about naked women.That is in fact what I got. Wait, there was also this really annoying character who was obviously a gay stereotype. Almost every joke about him was that he was gay. I guess this film just holds up poorly. I'm surprised at how bad the production values of this film are. It was made in the 1990's, but it looks more like it was made in the 1970's. Maybe I just got a bad version. It seemed like there wasn't much of an attempt to make jokes of any kind. There was the occasional laugh, but that was it. I'm amazed that this was the first movie in the series in fourteen years! "Carry On Emanuelle" may have been bad enough to end this franchise for awhile, but this entry killed it off for good. I guess it's hard to judge as this is the first "Carry On" movie I've seen, but it seems like a waste of time or bad even by their own standards. *1/2
Blueghost
I'm surprised this film was greenlit. It looks like a British or European attempt to mimic the American pre-teen to 20-something market commercial film making model. It's a mercifully free form the burden of intelligence production, but has a kind of simplistic charm to it that melds old school bawdy comedies with a somewhat more intellectual based material. So you get gags about personas of the time, what they did, what they asked for and achieved.If you know your renaissance history, know what was happening around the time of Columbus and his famous voyage(s), then you'll be in the know. In short, you need to have some history in your mind regarding the place and period to appreciate some of the humor.But, not all of the humor is immersed in historical data (or interpretations thereof). A lot of it basic gag material, some of it sexual, some of it slapstick, some of it is just basic humor about every day habits of people. In summation the film isn't all that funny, but it has a kind of light hearted charm to it, and in this way amusing, but it's more miss than hit in terms of a good funny film.Even so, it is a good film after a fashion. I'm not sure what went wrong here, but there is a kind of attractiveness just to the overall structure and film itself. But, that's the film maker in me talking, and not the Joe-Audience member that should be authoring this review.If you need a little light amusement in your life, you could do worse, but you could also do better than "Carry On Columbus".A harmless title all the same, but not something I'd readily recommend. Watch at your own risk.
Jackson Booth-Millard
It was perhaps coincidence that the last Carry On film ever made (thirteen years after the final compilation film, That's Carry On) was also the last one I had to watch, having watched all thirty in a non-chronological order over the years, and sadly it is not a good one. Basically Christopher Columbus (Jim Dale) is sure that he can sail the seven seas to find a different route to the far East and discovers new countries. To do this he needs finance, so he convinces King Ferdinand (Leslie Phillips) and Queen Isabella (June Whitfield) of Spain to give him the money he needs to hire a boat and get a crew together. Also coming along on the trip however is spy Fatima (Sara Crowe) who has been sent by The Sultan of Turkey (Rik Mayall) to sabotage the journey so that he will not lose the money he gets through taxing people. Eventually after many incidents along the way Columbus and the crew do come across a new country, later to become America, and they get to know The Chief (The Nutty Professor's Larry Miller) and all the other residents, until they return home with a fortune of (unreal) gold. I will be honest and say that I didn't really follow or care what was going on. Also starring Peter Richardson as Bart Columbus, Alexei Sayle as Achmed, Julian Clary as Don Juan Diego, Bernard Cribbins as Mordecai Mendoza, Richard Wilson as Don Juan Felipe, Keith Allen as Pepi the Poisoner, Nigel Planer as The Wazir, Andrew Bailey as Genghis, Burt Kwouk as Wang, Tony Slattery as Baba the Messenger, Maureen Lipman as Countess Esmeralda, Holly Aird as Maria, Jon Pertwee as Duke of Costa Brava, Martin Clunes as Martin, Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Charles Fleischer as Pontiac, Jack Douglas as Marco the Cereal Killer, Chris Langham as Hubba and Peter Gilmore as Governor of the Canaries. Kenneth Williams, Sid James, Frankie Howerd, Charles Hawtrey, Hattie Jacques and Peter Butterworth had all passed away, and Barbara Windsor (who rightly said the script was "crap"), Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslew and Terry Scott refused to take part, only Dale, Gilmore, Phillips, Pertwee and Whitfield came back for another, the rest of the cast consists mostly of rising and alternative comedians. The cast is good, but having them is pointless because the film is so bad, the Carry On films are a British institution and something to be remembered when they were good, and this was only made to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the America. The good Carry On films (Cleo, Screaming, Don't Lose Your Head, Up the Khyber, Camping, Again Doctor) all came out in the 1960's, it is in the 1970's that the innuendos and double entendre turned into pure filth and rubbish, especially in England and Carry on Emmannuelle - which along with this are the worst, this is a never funny and crap comedy. Poor!