This early entry in the Hope and Crosby canon may be their best. The Don Hartman gags are still fresh, and Bob and Bing are young enough to be romantic leads, which indeed they are. A spoof of the kind of jungle adventure movie popular at the time, one's enjoyment of this now more than sixty year old film may depend in part on the kind of movie it's making fun of, otherwise it might seem just plain absurd. It is anyway. Absurd I mean. Also very funny. The studio jungle looks like a studio jungle, which only adds to the air of the ridiculous, as does Bing's breaking into song at odd moments. Leading ladies Dorothy Lamour and Una Merkel are good foils for (as they used to call them) the boys. Good fun, and a great movie for the holidays.
Review of Road to Zanzibar
