Carry On Cabby

Carry On Cabby (1963)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Gerald Thomas

Starring: Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Kenneth Connor, Charles Hawtrey, Esma Cannon

From: Peter Roberts Productions

Hopefully I'll be back soon and the ramifications of Hurricane Irma won't cause me to vanish from the online world for a day or more... there's no way to predict such a thing, unfortunately. At least I saw something pretty funny...:

I expect this will be my last review for a few days. I do live in Florida and Hurricane Irma will go through the state tomorrow. I hope that there's no issue with the power and/or the Internet but anything can happen... hopefully I'll be fine and the same goes for all the people I know in the state.

As it was on TV (TCM, of all channels) last night I figured it was a good idea to relax by watching a comedy. Those in the UK and other countries may be surprised to hear this, but the Carry On franchise is not really known in the United States. Unless you buy region-free discs from Amazon or rent the few that are on Amazon Video, they are hard to track down, at least legally. I knew that the series-where the cast played different roles each time-was full of such things as slapstick and bawdy humor-although after watching this, things weren't so saucy-so it sounded like something I would dig. Another fact which may be surprising is that I am not even that familiar with any of the Carry On franchise regulars, such as Sid James, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey or Kenneth Connor. I'll mention now that I found all of them to be utterly delightful here, and this won't be the only CO flick I see.

I was glad I saw this as it did give me some needed laughs. A cab company is followed; the wife of the company's owner feels ignored due to him being busy all the time at work so she establishes her own cab company, which is staffed by young attractive women. Not complicated, but it's fine as the film is pretty amusing. There's one-liners from the lines of Sid James and Kenneth Connor, and the nebbish Charles Hawtrey was clumsy so there were pratfalls with him. Hattie Jacques as the poor neglected wife was also pretty amusing.

I admit that this was a silly low-budget thing which was low-brow and plays on obvious stereotypes, especially concerning gender. Yet, it tickled me pink and I am not surprised this series lasted for 2 decades straight despite the critics not loving it. I understand they tried bringing it back in the 90's and it was a disaster, but the last entries in the 70's apparently weren't great either; I know one had a big character named S. MELLY, and they even tried spoofing Emmanuelle. I'll try to track down the entries worth watching.