Carry On Sergeant

It’s all about a Dad . . . a Draftee . . . and a Detonation heard round the camp!

Comedy War
84 min     6.4     1958     United Kingdom

Overview

Fall in for the first ever film in the highly successful Carry On comedy series—now an acclaimed British institution. Kenneth Connor and Charles Hawtrey are the prankish misfits who become the hilarious bane of Army Officers existence when he makes a bet he will turn them into ‘Star Squad’ Award soldiers—or bust!

Reviews

CinemaSerf wrote:
I suppose that this first of the "Carry On" films suffered quite definitely from being all to easily compared with the far funnier and potent wartime efforts of the likes of Will Hay and Norman Wisdom. These latter efforts had a far more immediate sense of blackened humour given that bombs were frequently dropping around them all as the films were being made. This is more of a compendium of satire and smut that struggles to build on quite a weak story, some rather puerile dialogue and a remarkably lacklustre effort from a team who seemed just a little too tentative and out-of-sorts to string the flimsy plot out. That story centres around the desire of "Sgt. Grimshawe" (William Hartnell) to retire in a blaze of glory by taking his ramshackle squadron of half-baked boys and girls and turn them into the winner of the "Star Squad" award. What ensues is slapstick-lite, with punchlines you can see from space and some really quite bland stereotypical characterisations of the nice but dim, the clever but hapless and the sexually frustrated - none of which really worked for me. It's barely eighty minutes long buy it felt longer and I was a bit bored with it by mid-way through. Better to come - well you'd hope so.

Similar