Carry-On review – Taron Egerton channels Kenneth Connor in misleadingly titled Netflix thriller | Film

For vulgar-minded Brits, a Hollywood film title sometimes carries its own unintended associations and unfortunate resonances. Many were pained at the raucous response from some here in 2017 to the title of Robert Redford’s earnest film Our Souls at Night. Now here is a moderate new piece of Netflix product, a thriller about a bomb smuggled on to a plane in hand-baggage, starring Taron Egerton as Ethan, the airport security officer in a tense situation and Jason Bateman as the sinister explosives mastermind. It’s called … Carry-On.

That title is self-explanatory for everyone in the United States. But it’s bound to get British Netflix subscribers very overexcited, assuming as they surely will that the greatest movie franchise in the history of cinema is about to be rebooted with a sexy new cast. Egerton is a Brit. Couldn’t he have warned Netflix that the film ought possibly to have been retitled for the UK?

And it has to be said that with his hangdog look and air of pained misery, Egerton has basically got the Kenneth Connor role. His girlfriend, who incidentally has the very Carry On name of Nora, is played by Sofia Carson; she is pregnant and nagging Ethan to follow his dreams and reapply to the police academy. I spent the entire film wondering how Joan Sims would have handled the part, probably by giving Ethan the odd clip round the ear. The tough, wizened airport security boss is played by Dean Norris; if only his character’s lined face was allowed to occasionally split into a grin while he did a wheezy haah-haah-haah laugh, then it is a shoo-in for Sidney James. And as for Jason Bateman’s creepy terrorist, his face set in haughty disapproval and contempt … he can only be channelling Kenneth Williams.

This Carry-On really could have leaned in more to the classic trappings. As he battled the bad guys, Egerton could have denounced the infamy, the infamy, they’ve all got it … Well, it was not to be.