Doctor at Sea

Doctor at Sea is a most appropriate title for this latest British contribution to broad brawl-and brothel humor. The Rankmen have wandered from the drawing room to tackle slapstick of the old formless Hollywood kind, and they seem almost as uncomfortable in this role as their earnest young doctor who is forced to cope with unreasoning sailors and voluptuous prostitutes. Given a crude genre, however, Doctor at Sea still manages to be highly amusing, to an uncritical audience.

Although it is no cruder than its sequel, Doctor in the House, Doctor at Sea is somewhat less successful. Its minor characters are much less realistic and hence less intrinsically amusing than their counterparts in the earlier movie. James Robertson Justice, who practically carried Doctor in the House as a gruff but good-hearted surgeon, now becomes an apopleptic ship-captain, and loses some of his charm. Similarly, devil-may-care medical school comrades are supplanted by an equally devil-may-care but less interesting ship's crew. They provide a slightly flimsy background for the doctor, Dirk Bogarde, who is essentially an innocuous straightman, requiring the accompaniment of characters more fully developed in their wiliness.

If the sailors of the S.S. Lotus are unsatisfactory as comic characters, at least the situations are often funny. Many are stock: the predicted accident, the splattered face, the timid or revulsed male confronted with the fond, impetuous female. But even the most banal scenes (e.g. the predictable seasickness) are often delightful. Although one is always conscious that this is not illuminating comedy, it is entirely possible to enjoy it. Those ruled by a narrow prejudice against slapstick, however, must be warned.