I Watch Films: The Road To Bali

The Road To Bali
 
The Road To... series with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are a set of comedy films which make fun of other films and films in general; but we’re not in 1952 so maybe we don’t get the references. How does it stand up on its own?

It begins as a promising comedy adventure with Hope and Crosby as two dubious song-and-dance men looking to leave Australia to get out of marrying women they’ve promised to. They sign on as deep sea divers for the Prince Ken Arok who is looking to usurp Princess Lala Mctavish (Dorothy Lamour as the half-Scottish half-Indonesian ruler of an island on the “road” to Bali). They escape the prince, have an extended and rather silly set of shipwrecked adventure skits, and are discovered by the inhabitants. Princess Lala can’t decide which of the two she prefers, but it turns out women can have two husbands on that island.

In a rather complex series of events the wicked prince changes things so that Princess Lala must marry the king as his seventh wife and Hope and Crosby, masked in their wedding finery and believing they are marrying Lala, get married to each other. (“One of us has to go to Reno,” they declare on discovering this, the standard place to get a quickie divorce). The volcano god, apparently down with polyamory, isn’t happy with same-sex marriage and erupts for the final action sequence. Princess Lala chooses Bing Crosby, Bob Hope summons Jane Russell (his co-star from other films) and she chooses Crosby as well; the three of them walk off down the beach arm in arm leaving Hope complaining that the film isn’t over yet, he’s going to get the girl.

There’s some good jokes, some passable jokes made good by the timing and charisma, it’s mostly silly slapstick and jokes at the expense of the leads so avoids being grossly sexist or racist. The fourth wall breaking gets a bit too much; the first one is pretty good* and then they go downhill, especially during the middle, shipwreck sequence.

Watch This: For a classic comedy or if you want some jokes about films of the early 50s
Don’t Watch This: If modern zany, fourth-wall breaking, pop-culture comedies do nothing for you and an old one is going to be even less relevant

* They arrive at Prince Arok’s boat to discover it’s crewed by bare-chested men in sarongs. From memory:

Hope: Do they all dress like that where we’re going?
Arok: Of course, this is our usual dress
Hope, to Crosby: Hey do you think that...
Crosby: No definitely not.
Hope, to camera: Keep watching folks, he might be wrong.

He’s not wrong, there are no boobs in the picture