classicsoncall The first thing you have to do with this picture is get past the idea that Hope and Crosby would have been part of a carnival tour in Africa. And this was back in 1950 when the continent would have been more primitive than it is today. It didn't seem to me there would have been a whole lot of paying customers to see circus acts on the Dark Continent, but who knows? This picture has more of the familiar Hope and Crosby camaraderie that we expect with the 'Road' pictures, that concept hadn't been fully worked out yet with the debut of "Road to Singapore" which came out the prior year. Ben Mankiewicz, host of the Turner Classic Movie channel mentioned that both actors hired their own writers to punch up their parts in the script, sometimes leaving Dorothy Lamour at a loss when expecting her cues. Their ad-libbing often discarded original lines in the story, but knowing that, it didn't appear to me that Lamour was all that bothered by it. She rolled with the punches pretty well if you ask me.Interestingly, the Bingster doesn't share any tunes with his partner in this one, although ex-slave girl Donna (Lamour) gets up close and personal with Fearless Frazier (Hope) while doing the 'You're Dangerous' number. Can you imagine how uncomfortable she could have made him if she were wearing a sarong? Because she didn't, I had to create that mental image myself.I guess it was pretty standard for jungle movies to introduce a gorilla at some point, so with that in mind, Fearless gets locked in a cage with one and has to wrestle his way out. I could be wrong on this, but to my mind, this is the first time I ever saw a monkey get monkey flipped. Hope looked pretty good in his cage match, leading me to conclude that he might have made a pretty good pro-wrestler himself. He'd have to pack on a few more pounds though.As they did in all their Road pictures, Hope and Crosby get the most mileage they can out of being con men with pretty funny results here. One of their staples was the old patty cake routine, which didn't work the first time here against a hulking guy named Solomon (holy cow - that was pro-wrestler Jules Strongbow!), but later on they used the gimmick to become a big time hit with the natives.

mark.waltz The team of Hope, Crosby and Lamour are back for their second "Road" venture, and while not a sequel, the trio is definitely playing exactly the same characters, although with different names. The formula took, and this time, they are somewhere in Africa, although this is Hollywood's Africa, not Rand McNally's. Starting off in a carnival, Hope literally almost goes up in flames, and soon they are on the run and for some reason end up over the Atlantic and south of the equator where they once again save Dorothy from a predicament, although they're obviously suckers for doing so.Some neat sets, pretty tunes and racy (as well as racist) humor follows. The parody starts here, with one intended victim of the patty cake game "obviously having seen the movie". When they encounter an African native tribe, one of them quips, "Who's got the dice?" Some of the jokes work. A few others don't, and a few bring groans. Una Merkel has a rather small part as Dorothy's pal. Spoofs of nature documentaries of the time is obvious. This would really hit it's height of the series in the next film where the three went off to Morocco.

Scaramouche2004 Following the huge success of the previous years Road to Singapore, Paramount seemed anxious to cash in on the public appeal of the Crosby/Hope partnership and before our intrepid travellers had a chance to unpack from their last Road trip, they were sent out on the road again, this time to the untamed jungles of Africa.Hope and Crosby play circus performers on this trip with Hope playing Fearless Frazer, Human Cannonball, Monster Wrestler and High Flying Daredevil Extrodinaire and Crosby plays his smooth talking promoter who forces his pal to risk his life on whatever highly dangerous, life threatening feat of death, his perverse mind can conjure. As our story opens Hope and Crosby are fleeing justice after their last money making stunt burns down an entire circus camp.On a chance meeting with an eccentric if not completely GaGa millionaire, they become the proud owners of a deed to a diamond mine, which turns out to be false. Having been thoroughly swindled they sell the deed to a gang of cutthroats and barely escape with their lives.Lost in the wild, but at least for once rich, they come across Una Merkel and now permanent "Road To.." love interest and stalwart, Dorothy Lamour, who are about to be sold into slavery.Rescuing Una and Dotty is but the beginning of this Tarzanesque adventure as they promise to take the two damsels in distress across Africa on safari, so Dorothy can find her missing, ailing but stinkingly rich father...supposedly!!!! Of course its a con as for once it is Dorothy Lamour who is working the racket and Hope and Crosby, taken in with false promises of wealth and riches, are suckered to a tee.Lions, Tigers, Jungle Drums, restless and hungry natives and a rather playful gorilla set the scene in this second "Road To" adventure, where the characters, humour and feel of the series was finally perfected.Hopes one liners are second to none, Bing spars with Hope wonderfully and sings as good as ever and if Dorothy Lamour was as beautiful in any other film then I sure as hell haven't seen it.It was clear that with this formula in place the "Road To..." films could only get bigger and better from here on in.The Road to Zanzibar was also the Road to Success.

Robert J. Maxwell Of the comedy teams that made a series of movies in the 1940s and 1950s, Hope and Crosby were probably the most engagingly amusing. Abbott and Costello were usually silly. Their movies seemed aimed at an audience of children, although some, like "Meet Frankenstein", are outrageous. There was an element of sadism too, with Abbott (always the humorless straight man) slapping the helpless Costello around and snarling at him, a standard relationship left over I guess from vaudeville where clowns batted each other over the head with bladders.Martin and Lewis were clearly differentiated. Martin was the parent and Lewis was the twelve-year-old child. It all seems a bit much, now. But Hope and Crosby were the most nearly equal. Crosby was the smooth-talking crooner. Both were cowards but Hope was a braggart too, a stock figure in the comedies of Ancient Rome and afterward. I think the figure was called miles gloriosus. What they had that the other teams didn't, and what's on good display here, is a kidding quality that consists of trying to outwit one another, competition for the girl (Dorothy Lamour), inside jokes, and a kind of comfortably relaxed unspoken friendship that draws the audience in.In many ways the funniest scene is when Hope and Crosby realize they've been double crossed by Lamour and set out to find her and tell her off. They discover some shreds of her clothing and conclude, mistakenly, that she's been eaten by leopards and carried off. (Hope: "They didn't even leave an ear. What hogs those leopards are.") The two men try to mourn her passing in a sincere and dignified way but their anger at her keeps simmering to the surface. They interrupt their weeping to recite some poetry over her buried clothing but they don't know any poems. Hope starts off with, "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up/ in the Malamut saloon..." Crosby chides him and instead begins to recite "Casey at the Bat." The scene simply cracks me up. Crosby: "She was just a kid." Hope: "We'll miss her. Even though she was WRONG!" When they realize she's still alive they sneer and kick away the dirt from her "grave." I don't think of "The Road to Zanzibar" as necessarily their best Road picture, although it's right up there with "Utopia" and "Morocco." It was basically their first though. The earlier "Road to Singapore" lacked the lazy improvisational impression that this one has. "Singapore" seems, in retrospect, too well plotted, if you can imagine. You've gotta give these guys a little room to kick out. The plot's absurd anyway. Africa on the Paramount set, with phony drums and "natives" and a guy in a gorilla suit engaged in a professional wrestling match with Hope. Actually, Hope's pretty amusing. Woody Allen has said that he picked up quite a few of Hope's comic mannerisms to use in his own performances. (See also Hope's "They've Got Me Covered," a classic of its kind, so to speak.) And Crosby is a necessary counterpart to Hope's physicality. The two work very well together.I'll have to throw in one of their exchanges. The pair find themselves broke and stranded in a small African town. Hope (gloomily): "This must be the nowhere that people say they're 500 miles from." Crosby: "Well don't blame me. We wouldn't be here if you hadn't sold the map to that diamond mine." Hope: "Hah! It's your fault! If you hadn't bought it I wouldn't have had it. And if I didn't have it I couldn't sell it. So if I couldn't sell it, then we wouldn't be stuck here, would we?" Crosby: "Nope." Hope (looks doubtful for a moment, thinking hard): "I don't get it." Their movies also produced a number of popular songs, some of which have become standards. This one has "It's Always You." Others have songs like "Moonlight Becomes You." You'll probably enjoy this one. If you're in the proper mood, it will crack you up.