Copyright 11 April 1941 by Paramount Pictures Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 9 April 1941. U.S. release: 11 April 1941. Australian release: 29 May 1941. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward: 21 May 1941 (ran 6 weeks). 8,220 feet. 91 minutes.
SYNOPSIS: Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Fearless Frazier (Bob Hope) are American sideshow artists in darkest Africa. Chuck is always figuring out some wild money-making scheme while Fearless wants only to get back home. Two stranded girls (Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel) persuade the boys to take them on a long safari. They run into cannibals, wild beasts, and other hazards.
NOTES: Number two of Crosby/Hope's seven Road pictures. The first six were produced by Paramount. The last, Road to Hong Kong (1962) was a United Artists release. Zanzibar became a top box-office grosser in the U.S.A./Canada, and number 25 at Australian ticket windows for 1941.
COMMENT: The second of the "Road" films. Like the first, Road to Singapore (1940), it will be a disappointment to viewers who are expecting the lively wit, the crazy asides to the camera, the side-splitting "in" jokes, the pungent satire and amusingly pell-mell situations of the later entries in the series. True, there are maybe six or seven attempts at wild spoofs, including an on-screen reference to orchestras suddenly blooming in the middle of the jungle, and the wacky use of sub-titles - one of them deliciously censored - in the madcap scene with the cannibals.
But many of the gags, alas, are rather weak. And they are not made any funnier by the often too-strenuous efforts of Hope and Crosby to put them over. Aside from a few mildly amusing quips, it's painfully obvious that the principals are being made to work too hard to raise laughs. The strain shows in their exaggerated, top-of-the-voice portrayals.
Shertzinger's often colorless direction with its long takes and routine camera placements, must also take its share of the blame. In fact, Schertzinger doesn't really come to life until halfway through, when he suddenly introduces an off-camera commentary. The action that follows, capped by that great scene in which the boys beat the graveyard drums that inadvertently summon the cannibals, is much more inventively staged and far more lively.
Oddly, Lamour comes off best in the acting stakes. Her performance is light and charming and not overdone. Miss Merkel is okay. She is forced to spend the film in Lamour's shadow. The support players, however, - Douglass Dumbrille, Iris Adrian, the lovely Joan Marsh, Eric Blore, - have remarkably little to do. Production values are often helped out by spectacular stock footage (the circus fire, porters winding through the jungle, the massed attack of warriors). Photography and other technical credits are smooth as they come.
SYNOPSIS: Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Fearless Frazier (Bob Hope) are American sideshow artists in darkest Africa. Chuck is always figuring out some wild money-making scheme while Fearless wants only to get back home. Two stranded girls (Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel) persuade the boys to take them on a long safari. They run into cannibals, wild beasts, and other hazards.
NOTES: Number two of Crosby/Hope's seven Road pictures. The first six were produced by Paramount. The last, Road to Hong Kong (1962) was a United Artists release. Zanzibar became a top box-office grosser in the U.S.A./Canada, and number 25 at Australian ticket windows for 1941.
COMMENT: The second of the "Road" films. Like the first, Road to Singapore (1940), it will be a disappointment to viewers who are expecting the lively wit, the crazy asides to the camera, the side-splitting "in" jokes, the pungent satire and amusingly pell-mell situations of the later entries in the series. True, there are maybe six or seven attempts at wild spoofs, including an on-screen reference to orchestras suddenly blooming in the middle of the jungle, and the wacky use of sub-titles - one of them deliciously censored - in the madcap scene with the cannibals.
But many of the gags, alas, are rather weak. And they are not made any funnier by the often too-strenuous efforts of Hope and Crosby to put them over. Aside from a few mildly amusing quips, it's painfully obvious that the principals are being made to work too hard to raise laughs. The strain shows in their exaggerated, top-of-the-voice portrayals.
Shertzinger's often colorless direction with its long takes and routine camera placements, must also take its share of the blame. In fact, Schertzinger doesn't really come to life until halfway through, when he suddenly introduces an off-camera commentary. The action that follows, capped by that great scene in which the boys beat the graveyard drums that inadvertently summon the cannibals, is much more inventively staged and far more lively.
Oddly, Lamour comes off best in the acting stakes. Her performance is light and charming and not overdone. Miss Merkel is okay. She is forced to spend the film in Lamour's shadow. The support players, however, - Douglass Dumbrille, Iris Adrian, the lovely Joan Marsh, Eric Blore, - have remarkably little to do. Production values are often helped out by spectacular stock footage (the circus fire, porters winding through the jungle, the massed attack of warriors). Photography and other technical credits are smooth as they come.