This is a splashy Technicolor comedy with Bob Hope as an impersonator on the run, Virginia Mayo as a kidnapped princess, Victor McLaglan as "The Hook", and Walter Slezak as the ruler of an island that serves as a pirate's rest stop.
It should be funnier than it is, and I was trying to figure out why it doesn't come off more satisfactorily than it does. It's certainly fast enough. Everyone seems to be running around, bellowing, and there are explosions and multiple sword fights, and a few minutes of romance. But it's not funny for the same reason that "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd" isn't funny anymore. It's a child's idea of comedy in that it lacks any sophistication. I don't mean to be supercilious but kids laugh at things that don't demand much of them. Somebody takes a pratfall and a fifth-grader laughs. Kids don't need to know anything other than what they see happening on the screen.
What made the Road movies so funny was that there were pauses so that the audience could take a breath while Bing Crosby crooned a silly tune to Dorothy Lamour. And Hope and Crosby were constantly trying to outwit each other in ways both shameless and sly. When they had a friendly embrace and picked each other's pockets at the same time, we could identify with them, or at least with their desires. There was somebody for a grown up to ROOT for on the screen.
The Road team had a different set of writers -- Panama and Frank -- and they were better at giving Hope gags than the writers of "The Princess and the Pirate." Hope is given a couple of anachronistic wisecracks -- "made in Japan, eh?" -- but they don't save the day because the rest of the movie propels us at warp speed through the ludicrous plot. One of the more amusing scenes is a minor rip-off from the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup." What's missing is the easy banter between Hope and Crosby, the more delicate touches provided for them. ("Delicate", here, being a relative term.) Hope on his own could be hilarious, as he was in "They Got Me Covered." Danny Kaye was making movies in this period that were just as funny and, like Hope, he always played the same character, but it was a different character: the shy, neurotic schlub. Hope always played the same part in the 1940s too -- the sniveling, greedy, libidinous coward -- but nobody was better at it. Woody Allen borrowed some of Hope's mannerisms for his own performances.
If you give Hope the right settings and the right gags he runs with the ball like nobody's business. But this part could have been done by almost any comic actor, maybe Red Skelton. "The Princess and the Pirate" was released in 1944. Hope had some splendid movies ahead of him. In the 1960s he was churning out one turkey after another. I suppose he must have enjoyed working. He surely didn't need the money by then. When he finally quit, he played golf, continued to make his well-known USO tours to troops overseas, and lived to a respectably old age. Not at all a bad career.
It should be funnier than it is, and I was trying to figure out why it doesn't come off more satisfactorily than it does. It's certainly fast enough. Everyone seems to be running around, bellowing, and there are explosions and multiple sword fights, and a few minutes of romance. But it's not funny for the same reason that "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd" isn't funny anymore. It's a child's idea of comedy in that it lacks any sophistication. I don't mean to be supercilious but kids laugh at things that don't demand much of them. Somebody takes a pratfall and a fifth-grader laughs. Kids don't need to know anything other than what they see happening on the screen.
What made the Road movies so funny was that there were pauses so that the audience could take a breath while Bing Crosby crooned a silly tune to Dorothy Lamour. And Hope and Crosby were constantly trying to outwit each other in ways both shameless and sly. When they had a friendly embrace and picked each other's pockets at the same time, we could identify with them, or at least with their desires. There was somebody for a grown up to ROOT for on the screen.
The Road team had a different set of writers -- Panama and Frank -- and they were better at giving Hope gags than the writers of "The Princess and the Pirate." Hope is given a couple of anachronistic wisecracks -- "made in Japan, eh?" -- but they don't save the day because the rest of the movie propels us at warp speed through the ludicrous plot. One of the more amusing scenes is a minor rip-off from the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup." What's missing is the easy banter between Hope and Crosby, the more delicate touches provided for them. ("Delicate", here, being a relative term.) Hope on his own could be hilarious, as he was in "They Got Me Covered." Danny Kaye was making movies in this period that were just as funny and, like Hope, he always played the same character, but it was a different character: the shy, neurotic schlub. Hope always played the same part in the 1940s too -- the sniveling, greedy, libidinous coward -- but nobody was better at it. Woody Allen borrowed some of Hope's mannerisms for his own performances.
If you give Hope the right settings and the right gags he runs with the ball like nobody's business. But this part could have been done by almost any comic actor, maybe Red Skelton. "The Princess and the Pirate" was released in 1944. Hope had some splendid movies ahead of him. In the 1960s he was churning out one turkey after another. I suppose he must have enjoyed working. He surely didn't need the money by then. When he finally quit, he played golf, continued to make his well-known USO tours to troops overseas, and lived to a respectably old age. Not at all a bad career.