Having to leave Melbourne in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals, two song-and-dance men sign on for work as divers. This takes them to an idyllic island on the way to Bali where they vie with each other for the favours of Princess Lala. The hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels which arouses the less romantic interest of some shady locals.
Similar titles
Reviews
I love and own all seven Road pictures. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby have an on screen relationship that is hilarious. Dorothy Lamar appears in the first six movies as the love interest of both the guys but Crosby ends up with her by the end of the movie. She also is in the Hong Kong one but since it is a few years later she basically does a cameo as an older torch singer in a club. In this particular show the two guys are running from many shotgun marriage parties that are trying to find them. They end up at a small island nation where Hope is sent down to find the treasure while Bing woos the princess. Michael Ansara plays the bad guy and of course gets his comeuppance. Since this is old time Hollywood all the natives are played by whites in make up.
Well, they can't all be gems. This was probably the weakest of the Road pictures to date, although it does have beautiful Technicolor, elaborate sets, Dorothy Lamour, hilarious banter between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, and quite a few laughs...not to mention cameos by Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, Bing's brother Bob, and Jane Russell.Sadly, the one thing lacking is coherent script. What passes for a script would have been more at home in a 1950s Bob Hope television show. This script...and road...needed a map. Instead, it wanders from gag to gag, laugh to laugh, skit to skit. But there's no continuity. And please, do we really need to stoop to amorous gorillas????? I've always enjoyed Hope and admired Crosby...not to mention some darned good road pictures. And, I'm still glad to have this one. But, despite rather lavish color, this is like driving down a dirt road. I'm only giving this one a weak "7".Of note, the Kino-Lorber redo on Blu Ray is high quality. Great color, slightly grainy from time to time, but I doubt you'll ever see a better restoration for this pic.
This comedy is the sixth of the seven 'road to' series and is the only one to be filmed in color. When you have a good formula keep it working. Bob Hope plays Harold and Bing Crosby plays George, two out of work song-and-dance men, who have to leave Australia in a hurry to avoid a couple of marriage proposals. The two are hired as deep-sea divers by a South Seas prince(Murvyn Vye)in order to recover a buried treasure. Of course, there has to be a beautiful princess...Dorothy Lamour plays Princess Lala; and Harold and George go 'ga-ga' for the beauty as the three head to Bali to sell the recovered treasure chest full of jewels. Cannibals, alligators and a giant squid vie for screen time; as well as cameos by Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin and Bing's brother Bob. There are several songs with the best being "Moonflowers" by Lamour and "To See You Is To Love You" by Crosby. Others in the cast: Michael Ansara, Ralph Moody, Peter Coe and Carolyn Jones.
By this time - the sixth in an eventual series of seven - the formula was well established; wise-cracks, in-jokes, forget the 'fourth wall', throw in some 'cameos' (in this case Bogie, Jane Russell, Bob Crosby and Martin and Lewis), a 'plot' that sees Bing con Bob into taking some dangerous job (human canon ball, deep-sea diver, etc), a soupcon of song and dance and away we go. This time around the duo leave town one bullet in front of a shotgun wedding - actually two bullets and two shotgun weddings as both Bing and Bob have dallied with local girls in Australia. They were, by definition, of their time so that much of the humour may seem flat but what remains is the great 'timing' and rapport between Hope and Crosby and perhaps above all the songs, many of which became not only 'hits' of the day but went on to become 'standards' such as Moonlight Becomes You and But Beautiful. This is hardly surprising given that Johnny Burke wrote the lyrics for the first six and Jimmy Van Heusen the music for the last six (Burke worked with composer James V. Monaco - 'Too Romantic' on the first in the series, Singapore and Van Heusen worked with new partner Sammy Cahn on the seventh, Hong Kong). The score here is as fine as ever with such gems as Chicago Style, To See You Is To Love You, Hoots, Mon, and Moonflower. Maybe not the best of the seven but not the worst either and the only one in colour.
