Carry On Cabby
They're here again in Carry on Taxi
‘Cabby’ is the 7th movie Produced by Peter Rogers and Directed by Gerald Thomas. This is my 2nd favourite Carry On film and to my mind it has the most driven plot of the whole series, (pun intended). Whilst the series itself is iconic and delivers some gut-busting hilarious moments, generally the character development in each film was pretty thin, with the exception of Carry On Sergeant.
Carry On Cabby is the one film in the entire series, where you actually care about the relationship between the two main characters, Charlie Hawkins, (Sid James), a workaholic taxi driver and owner of a successful firm and his wife Peggy, (Hattie Jacques), who is frustrated with the fact that he’s never home and never pays her any attention. So in order to get her own back on him, (behind Charlie’s back), Peggy starts a new taxi firm ‘Glam Cabs’ which consists entirely of women. Invariably this takes some business away from Charlie’s Company, which brings Peggy back to his attentions.
However things do not go the way of Peggy’s plans, which leads to a brilliant twist that literally made me cry with laughter. While this film is obviously a classic, it hasn’t dated in the way that so many comedies of that era do. In my opinion, the opening score to this film is the best music of the entire Carry On series, it is cheerful, whimsical and extremely British, just like this film.
10/10 – Calum Roberts