Things are all change at the hospital when Sir Lancelot Spratt announces his retirement. However Dr Hare is distracted already suffering with illness before being placed on the ward with jaundice. It is here where he meets nurse Sally Nightingale and woes her away from Dr Hinxman only to have her do a runner with some other man, ditching the both of them. With Hare broken hearted, Dr Burke suggests they head away for a few weeks and decide upon an experimental medical commune testing cold remedies. Of course the fact that two of the other 'guinea pigs' are exotic dancers don't help the two horny doctors abide by the rules, bringing them into conflict with the strict and professional staff.
With this being the fourth film in the Doctor series, nobody can really complain that they don't know what they are getting themselves into. And so it is with the usual mix of flirtatious humour and shambolic plot that this film opens and continues in that fashion. Early on the film establishes that this is about the usual antics of the women-loving doctors, and that's about the lot of the plot. It very much depends on your sense of humour if you like fairly basic, Carry On type of stuff then you should at least be amused by this. This is not to say that it is inventive or witty, because it isn't and most of it just treads along a fairly ordinary road without really making more than the most basic of efforts. Like another reviewer noted, it makes for a good 'wet Sunday afternoon' film because it is nicely dated and has a comic air to it even if it has few actual laughs. If anything the actual plot (involving Hare) bogs down the film, while the other more bawdry scenes at least have a sense of fun.
In this film in the series Dirk Bogarde stepped out and was replaced temporarily by Michael Craig; suffice to say he cannot really compare with the usual lead. He does his best but he doesn't make a mark a fact not helped by the collection of very famous British actors that surround him. The usual old cad, Leslie Phillips steals his scenes with his usual performance. Likewise Justice does well with only limited screen time. Sims and Fraser are instantly recognisable but I was never really convinced they were strippers if they were then they were certainly the least erotic 'erotic dancers' that I've ever seen! The support cast shows the omnipresent John Le Mesurier in a minor role as well as appearances for Nicholas Parsons, Beckwith and a cameo for a young looking Peter Sallis (of Summer Wine and Wallace & Gromit fame).
Overall this is a fairly broad film that never really hits the mark. The plot mixes a story about a sick boy with a load of detached sexual humour and neither of them really got me into the film. Laughs are pretty thin on the ground even if it does have a broadly comic air to it. The cast is impressive on paper but it is only a couple of them that manage to make an impact without much to work with in terms of material (Phillips steals scenes with his usual personae more than scripted lines). The downside of this cast is that the supposed 'lead' is totally lost and becomes the least interesting of all those involved.
