Rating: NR
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 03/05/2002
SubTitles: English/French
Dubbed: English/Espanol
Sound: 5.1/1
Run Time: 92 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Universal Studios
The second
Bing Crosby/
Bob Hope "Road" picture casts
Crosby as a penny-ante sideshow promoter and
Hope as
Crosby's only client, "Fearless Frazier." Under
Crosby's tutelage,
Hope has been shot from a cannon, zapped in an electric chair and nearly strangled by an octopus. Now they're practically broke and stranded on the African coast.
Crosby spends the last of their money to spring helpless
Dorothy Lamour from a native slave market. Actually,
Lamour and her pal
Una Merkel are scamming
Crosby and
Hope to finance a safari across Africa, so that
Lamour can link up with her wealthy fiance in Zanzibar. En route through the deepest, darkest jungle, both
Hope and
Crosby fall in love with
Lamour. But when they find out they're being taken for chumps, the boys leave the safari and strike out on their own. Captured by cannibals, the boys try and fail to win their freedom by having
Hope wrestle a particularly grumpy gorilla. Making their escape after teaching the natives their time-honored "Patty Cake" routine, they head for Zanzibar. Once again,
Crosby spends his ready money to spring
Lamour from her captured-by-slavers con game, obliging
Hope,
Crosby,
Lamour and
Merkel to try to earn passage money home by staging a "sawing the lady in half" routine for the locals.
Crosby: "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
Hope: "If I don't, one of us is going back half fare." Like the earlier
Road to Singapore,
Road to Zanzibar sticks too closely to the script and plot to allow those inveterate adlibbers
Hope and
Crosby free reign. Still, there are some choice moments: our favorite bit occurs when
Crosby comments to
Lamour on the artificiality of movie musicals--whereupon the sound of an orchestra pops up out of nowhere.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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