Number 28 in the series and Carry On is rapidly approaching moribund status. A slow action replay of Carry On Sergeant, ….England misjudges the saucy seaside charm of the original and, in attempt to keep pace with “modern” comedy trends, replaces it with on the nose smut and low level sex action. With new cast members and a new crew — crucially established screenplay writer Talbot Rothwell had been replaced by witless newbies David Pursall and Jack Seddon — the old magic had been replaced by bad puns (Sgts Ready, Willing and Able?) and a flush of toilet gags that jettison the film into the realms of the unwatchable.
Only four of the Carry On mainstays made it onto the cast list; Kenneth Connor eschews his little man persona to become a jumped up little dictator, Peter Butterworth does a brief nice essay in pompous stiff upper lippedness, Jack Douglas reprises his jerk and twitch schtick for the umpteenth time and Joan Sims is sidelined as an overbearing Private with barely ten lines to deliver. But TV “favourites” Windsor Davies (retreading his overbearing Sgt Major routine from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum), Patrick Mower and Judy Geeson are barely replacements for Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor and England has the whiff of a bad sitcom. In short, it represented the beginning of the end.