Road to Zanzibar (1941)

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour are at it again in the second film of the "Road Series" which follows "Road to Singapore" produced a year earlier. However, although the three actors have returned their characters are completely different. For example, Bing Crosby plays a con-man named "Chuck" who is constantly coming up with dangerous acts to use in a circus. Bob Hope plays his best friend "Fearless Frazier" who is generally the one who risks his life in whatever dangerous scheme Chuck has concocted. Yet for all of their experience in the confidence field they somehow end up being taken for a ride by a woman named "Donna Latour" (Dorothy Lamour) and her friend "Julia Quimby" (Una Merkel) who manage to convince them to take them on a long safari through the African jungle but conveniently leaves out the real reason Donna and Julia want to get there—so that Donna can marry a young millionaire. But what none of the four realize is just how dangerous this safari ends up becoming. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I thought this movie was a little bit better than its predecessor due in large part to the better coherence between the scenes. Likewise, the action was a little better as well. In any case, this was an entertaining comedy for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

After burning down the Big Top, singing carnival showman Bing Crosby (as Chuck Reardon) and human cannonball pal Bob Hope (as Hubert "Fearless" Frazier) take their act on the road. Traveling around Africa, the two men become involved in a phony diamond mine, and eventually find Dorothy "Dottie" Lamour (as Donna Latour) masquerading as a slave girl. She and partner Una Merkel (as Julia Quimby) have ulterior motives, but love may change La Lamour. Later, hungry natives mistake chubby Mr. Hope and Mr. Crosby for Gods, and then plan to eat them. Our co-stars contemplate their future as burps. The songs and material in this second "Road to…" picture are noticeably weak. The stunt doubles are simply noticeable.*** Road to Zanzibar (4/11/41) Victor Schertzinger ~ Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel

As it turned out this was the second in a franchise that no one thought of as a franchise at the time. Hope and Crosby had been teamed with Dorothy Lamour in what was intended as a one-off, Road To Singapore, and when Fred McMurray and George Burns passed on this someone remembered that Road To Singapore had made a little noise at the box office so why not team Hope and Crosby again and throw a 'road' into the title to remind fickle audiences of Singapore. Things were beginning to fall into place but we weren't there yet; Hope and Crosby were now established as performers with Crosby as the pitch man and Hope performing the life-threatening stunts and what, in retrospect, turned out to be the main ingredient - the songs - was also in place. With Fred and Ginger no longer a team at RKO someone at Paramount clearly figured there was a gap in the market and you can almost hear the thinking ...'what if, they weren't two DANCERS, but two SINGERS, then we add an extra 'girl' to the mix as a foil for Hope, Helen Broderick is working so why not Una Merkel, she did all right in Destry Rides Again opposite Micha Auer...' Actually the foursome worked quite well but it's the threesome we remember from the rest of the franchise (excluding the last, Hong Kong). We were also becoming used to the kind of jokes that let the audience in - the native chief tells Hope he will be fed to a giant bird which gives Crosby a chance to say 'this time the bird gets you'. If there are not too many lines as on the money as that the one thing that endures is the songs; on Singapore Johnny Burke was teamed with Jimmy Monaco but he'd now formed a partnership with Jimmy Van Heusen that would last throughout the forties and into the fifties and during that time they wrote not only all the other 'Road' pictures but also about 95 per cent of Crosby musicals. They started well here with three fine numbers, You Lucky People You (if you ever wondered where cockney comedian Tommy Trinder got his catch phrase from look no further), You're Dangerous, and the standout ballad It's Always You, plus the almost obligatory title number and it is these songs that will endure even if the films themselves tend to date.

Hope and Crosby are on the road again. This time, Hope is a daredevil called Fearless Frazier, Crosby is his shifty promoter. There are plenty of good laughs in 'Road to Zanzibar,' but the story is confusing. They just jump from one comic situation to another without much tying it all together. Still, I laughed quite a bit. A favorite scene of mine is where Hope and Crosby mourn the death of Dorothy Lamour's character, who they think was eaten by a crocodile.