Old Jokes Can Still Be Good Jokes

 Road to Bali (1952) – Two vaudeville performers have to escape Australia after one marriage proposal too many. But their escape to a Pacific paradise may have even more dire outcomes!

Directed by Hal Walker                                    Starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour

Why I Liked It – Old fashioned fun for the whole family.

 You want to see a “franchise” from Hollywood history?  Unlike the serial movies (Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, etc), the seven movies in the beloved “Road Movies” of Crosby and Hope rely less on recurring characters than a recurring format.  The crooner (Crosby) and the comic (Hope) are running some kind of con that requires a hasty exit at the start.  There are lots of pretty girls, and snappy dialogue.  The boys will vie for the affections of co-star Dorothy Lamour. Bing and Dorothy will get a couple changes to sing.  Toss in a dance number or two, and you’re set.  Plot?  We don’t need no stinking plot!

These movies are about gags, lots and lots of gags.  Sight gags, word play, a bit of wink, wink, nudge, nudge, all of them perfectly PG rated but meant to sound a little racy.  When the movie stuck to the gags it was a lot of fun.  The singing and dancing bits were an expected part of this kind of movie in its day.  It feels like they slow everything down today.  The other challenge for some current viewers is that the script is filled (and I mean “Ready Player One” kind of filled) with pop references of the ’40s and ’50s.  There’s a cute little reference to my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians in “Road to Bali”.  It doesn’t mean much unless you know that Crosby was a minority owner of the Pirates and Hope of the Indians at the time.  There are also some “inside Hollywood” references that most viewers at the time may not have “gotten” as well.  It’s still fast and funny watching.

The trio made six of these movies together (Lamour does make a short appearance at the end of the final installment).  The series was a consistent box office winner.  “Road to Bali” is the next to last in the series.  An eighth was planned but scrapped when Crosby died.  Dorothy Lamour made a Hollywood career out of playing the “girl in the sarong”, and the Road movies were her best known roles.

As was the norm at the time, there is no attempt to represent the people of the south Pacific realistically.  White actors playing non-white roles in stereotypical style.  They are all supporting roles because everything revolves around the three stars (Lamour gets a pass here as a princess of the islands since it’s an important plot point that her dad was a world traveling Scot).

As noted above, not much plot, lots of silliness from Crosby and Hope, Lamour brings a little class to the act and you’re off and running.  If you like one, you should like them all.  Check out the Roads to Singapore, Zanzibar, Morocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali and Hong Kong.

Rating – *** Worth A Look