Bing and Bob’s Bumpy Road To Bali

It’s Der Bingel and Der Bob…

As all us classic film fans know, something Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were most famous for were the seven “Road” pictures they made between 1940 and 1962. Number six in the lineup was Road To Bali, a 1952 jaunt that was not without its charms but not with a lot of laughs, either. It’s in color, though, so that’s cool, I guess.

The movie opens in Australia, with Harold (Bob Hope) and George (Bing Crosby) finishing up a show, with girls waiting for them backstage. They look pretty good until Harold and George find out these women have marriage on their minds, and since our guys can’t have that, they bolt. Really bolt. All the way to Darwin, where they take jobs as deep sea divers for a prince and hop on a ship bound for Bali, Indonesia.

Do Harold and George have experience as deep sea divers? Heck no, but that doesn’t matter. On the way to Bali they stop off at an island where the natives are friendly and half-Scottish Princess Lala (Dorothy Lamour) is even friendlier. When the guys show up, she’s giving a class on how to weave her family tartan. Naturally, both George and Harold are dead gone on her. Naturally, she plays hard to get. Well, a little bit, anyway. Lala is also a cousin of Prince Ken Arok (Murvyn Vye), a rather foreboding fellow who stares at everyone suspiciously as if he’s out to get them or vice versa.

What Lala really wants, though, is for Harold, with his mad deep sea skills (more mad than anything) to dive to the bottom of the ocean and bring back a chest of jewels. Long story short, Harold gets the jewels, but he, George, and Lala have to head to Bali because the Prince has decided he wants the jewels for himself.

On the way, they just happen to shipwreck on an island with a perfectly appointed hut, and naturally, three cots all ready for sleeping, but after an awkward scene of Lala skinny-dipping in the local swimming pool, our group finds they have to leave because, unlike the ones in Lala’s kingdom, the natives are not exactly friendly.

Oh yeah, and Harold and George are both in love with Lala, of course. There are a few weddings. No one ends up where they think they’re going to end up, either. And there’s more than a little weirdness.

OK, I know I’ve cobbled together what looks like a plot summary, but it was a struggle because Road To Bali doesn’t have much of a story. It’s got some good comedic moments, but for the most part feels like it’s trying much too hard in a Let’s Recycle Old Schtick And Hope No One Notices kind of way.

There’s a ton of fourth wall-breaking and navel gazing. Bing and Bob are both after the same woman. They’re both scared of marriage when it’s not them doing the chasing. There’s the threat of imminent death, usually by machete. There are crowds of faceless natives with various forms of torches and pitchforks…or, as in the case of Bali, poisoned darts that make the victim giggle and contort like an angry blackbird before going into a coma.

Actually, I take it back–Bali does break new ground in some spots; for instance, there’s a chimp wearing a Bob Hope mask in one of Lala’s flashback scenes when she’s reminiscing to Harold and George about her childhood. I wish I were kidding, I really do.

So, yeah, no, it doesn’t work. Even though the characters are supposed to go to Bali, there’s so much schtick it all feels pointless. I groaned and facepalmed way more than I laughed and longed for Road To Morocco, the only other Road movie I’ve seen so far and vastly superior to Bali. Naturally, Road To Bali is in the public domain and no one in the film industry seems to care, which is why various home media releases are out there with varying degrees of quality. I can’t say I blame Hollywood for its indifference.

Amazingly enough, the movie didn’t do too badly at the time of release, bringing in a respectable $8.3M at the box office in 1952 numbers. Even though the movie wasn’t the best of the “Road” movies, Bing and Bob were still very much bankable stars.

On the other hand, though, it would be interesting to know what moviegoers actually thought of the film afterwards, because if the press surrounding the film is any indication, it may have been oversold. Motion Picture Herald, for instance, called the movie “one of the funniest pictures ever made.” Bosley Crowther loved it as well.

Variety, on the other hand, was a bit more on-the-nose: “Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour are back again in another of Paramount’s highway sagas, with nonsensical amusement its only destination…There’s no story to speak of in the script…but the framework is there on which to hang a succession of amusing quips and physical comedy dealing with romantic rivalry and chuckle competition between the two male stars.”

Durable though they are, Bob and Bing were not immune to the occasional turkey, and while Road To Bali is occasionally fun, it doesn’t take long for the “Are we there yet?” stage to set in.

For more of the 2nd Annual Bing and Bob Blogathon, please see Kristen at Hoofers and Honeys. Thanks for hosting, Kristen–glad you brought this one back. Thanks for reading, all, and I’ll see you on Thursday with another post…

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Road To Bali is available to own on DVD from Amazon and is free to stream for Prime customers.

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