Cor, Blimey! (2000)

Overrated

Great Film overall

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I have seen a few documentaries about the Carry On films, and the affair between the adorable bubbly blonde and lovable dirty laughing git is often mentioned, and this drama is a pretty good depiction. It is 1964 at Pinewood Studios, Sidney "Sid" James (Goodnight Mister Tom's Geoffrey Hutchings) is making a successful film series, the Carry On films, along with actors Kenneth Williams (Charlie and the Chcoloate Factory's Adam Godley), Bernard Bresslaw (Steve Speirs), Joan Sims (Chrissie Cotterill), Charles Hawtrey (Hugh Walters) and Kenneth Connor (Derek Howard), and director Gerald Thomas (David McAllister). After completing Carry On Spying (which James was not in), Sid meets newcomer Barbara Windsor (Samantha Spiro), and he is instantly attracted to her. Over the years Sid pretty much pursues her, and she is constantly refusing to have any kind of affair with him. Eventually though "Babs" gives in to her feelings for him and allows him one night of passion, although it was probably more than that. The last film they made in each other's company was Carry On Dick, and just before the making of Carry On Emmannuelle (which Babs refused to be in, considered it distasteful), Sid James tragically died on stage. The final sequence where Kenny Williams and Babs (played by herself!) go into Sid's old trailer is quite heartfelt. Also starring Maria Charles as Mrs. Hawtrey, Jacqueline Defferary as Sally and Kenneth MacDonald as Eddie. Spiro is really convincing as Babs, Hutching's does alright as James, and the show is almost stolen by the almost spot-on impression of Williams by Godley. A good drama not just to see a depiction of this real story, but to get an idea of behind-the-scenes on the Carry On films. Good!

Having just watched the film I have to agree in parts with the bottom two contributors in that the inaccuracies in the film are a let down. I sat there and laughed when they used Bresslaw in place of Scott for the Henry scene.That said, what a superb film. Don't be fooled, as one of the other contributors said for Barbara Windsor to put herself in the film gives it an air of accuracy.It is a homage to those characters it portrays. Too often a film biopic will show someone completely different to the truth. This film gave it warts and all. Superbly acted by the front three and a game of spot the carry on stars throughout. I'd echo a shame that it couldn't show some of the other principle characters in depth but I suppose when you've got ninety minutes you go with what you can.Very amusing to see the Goldfinger characters, in particular as Shirley Eaton had been a carry on actress.You could only feel despair for Williams, a tortured soul hiding behind a screen of caustic veneer. Sid James character starts as a dirty old man who it soon shows as someone of very little repertoire other than the same parlour trick to seduce. The caravan incident is straight out of Carry On although I think the connotations of Ronnie Knights hard-man are far too camp and weak.Overall though, massively enjoyable. Those who found this disturbing should take off those rose tinted glasses.

The opening half of this film dramatising the affair between two of Britain's best and best-loved comedians, Sid James and Barbara Windsor, is a wonderful marriage of form and content, and a lesson to anyone who dares to make period dramas. From the cheeky title and CARRY ON-style credits, we know we're in for a treat that will not betray its subjects with deadly respectability.This half is filmed like a CARRY ON, with the central romance between Sid and Babs diffused by innuendo-laden bits of business featuring Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey et al. There is one stunning shot at the beginning where the vast Roman ampitheatre through which a soldier walks is revealed to be a tiny model, pointing to the themes of reality and appearance that will be the film's theme, as well as the economic reality of these films' production.Sid's life in this half is played like a CARRY ON farce, full of repetition, coitus interruptus, double entendres, comedy gangsters and buxom ladies locked in bathrooms. The general verdict on CARRY ONs is that they are an assembly line churning out shoddy products of ever decreasing quality, concerned only with adolescent titillation (this is not my view - HENRY and CLEO at least are great films, while KHYBER is the greatest of all British satires, and the equal of Bunuel); so treating the lives of these people who must subsume their own personalities in their screen personae (even the sex scene is mediated through cinematic apparatus), locked in an evermore limiting labyrinth of personal need and public status is true at least to public perception (behind which, presumably, the filmmakers wish to delve).The lines and jokes are fruity and excellent, the sets deliciously gaudy, the re-enactments priceless, the chronology a little wobbly, the acting a triumph (Samantha Spiro as Babs is so winning and moving she makes me totally reevaluate a figure I'd previously considered fairly margainal), but, best of all, it shows that farce, and especially CARRY ONs, have an emotional basis denied by its detractors.The screenwriter doesn't quite believe it either though, and this fertile approach is soon abandoned as the film gets more serious, tragic, and it seeks an appropriate mode to express this, fixing on a fatal melange of social realism and middle-class Rattiganisms (so as not to alienate the film's prime-time audience). The subversion of genre that was the first half (and subverting genre and its conservative functions was what CARRY ONs were all about) becomes a conventional biopic, robbing the subjects of their breezy singularity. Yes it's all very sad and desparing and tragic, yes the recreation of a shabby 70s Britain at the fag-end of both the entertainment industry and British society itself is expertly realised, but so is Merchant Ivory. There are lines of dialogue, which, without irony, could have come straight from an Alan Bennett parody. The despair of Williams is frequently alluded to, but to anyone unfamiliar with his story somewhat obscured. The hilarious parody of Burton and Taylor that characterises Sid and Babs' early relationship becomes sadly literal as we go on. You certainly wouldn't know why these cheaply-made music hall quickies remain astonishingly popular and vibrant today, while their more respectable peers lie in cobwebbed vaults. After such a fun start, then, a bit of a shame.

The British public's love affair with the 'Carry On' movies continues with this triumphant re-telling of actress Barbara Windsor's ill-fated romance with her comedy co-star Sidney James.The film covers the period 1964-1978 and is based on Terry Johnson's hugely successful 1998 stage-play "Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick", now nicely opened up for the big screen. Utilising many of the play's original actors, including Samantha Spiro, Geoff Hutchings and Adam Godley, 'Cor Blimey!' is a real treat for any self-respecting 'Carry On' fan. In particular, Spiro excels as the younger Babs Windsor. She is uncannily accurate in looks, mannerisms and voice, so much so that when the real Windsor appears as herself in the final scene, the join between the two actresses is hardly noticeable.Hutchings and Godley are also perfectly cast as Sid James and Kenneth Williams respectively, but viewers expecting just laughs will be a little disappointed. Aside from the leads, Williams is portrayed as a lonely unfulfilled hypochondriac and Charles Hawtrey (played by Hugh Walters) as an alcoholic mother's boy.Always moving and sensitively acted, 'Cor Blimey!' is a touching but extremely engaging and enjoyable film. Many fans will be left with tears in their eyes by the end. Several factual inaccuracies aside, this is top notch entertainment, no messing about! Highly recommended.