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Road to Bali (1952) More at IMDbPro »

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30 comments in total

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14 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Ad-libbed, 23 March 2004

Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

From the very first Road picture Hope and Crosby were known for their ad-libbing. In fact when they guested on each other's shows the two of them would take the script and insert some of their own lines to try and catch the other off-guard.

In this Road picture I will swear that the moment the boys and Dotty Lamour were washed ashore on the proverbial south sea island, the picture is one long ad-lib. I am sure the director said, here's the plot situation just make it up as you go. It's got that kind of spontaneity.

Look for 'guest' appearances by Jane Russell, Humphrey Bogart, Martin and Lewis and Bob Crosby in this wacky romp.

Says Dotty: "I love you Bob, I love you Bing, my heart's in a real wing ding." So do we all.

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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Look at those girls!, 14 June 2000

Author: Chris-147 (siemons@bigfoot.com)

The jokes just keep on coming in this 'Road movie'. There are so many gags here, you'll have to watch this film more than once to get them all. Although the story is very simple, the sets, the girls and especially the amazing Technicolor is a treat to watch. The Road To Bali is the medicine for a grey day!

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
A movie that's pretty dang funny, 8 February 2006

Author: CarsonFan from United States

I'm 14, and I'm a huge fan of Bob Hope. I got this movie for Christmas and I loved it. It was so darn funny. Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour all did a tremendous job. I was laughing my butt off throughout the movie. It was also great seeing Humphery Bogart, Dean Martin, and Jane Russell in cameos. Bob Hope is most funny when performing with Bing. They're a great comedy team. He has delivered lots of funny lines in this movie. It was funny how he made references to being in a movie or how Bing already had an Oscar. Bob Hope is one of the greatest comedians who ever lived and you all know it. Here's to Bob Hope!

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Fun with Hope & Crosby, 31 August 2003

Author: (willrams@earthlink.net) from Santa Maria, CA

I like all of the Hope and Crosby road pictures even if they were kind of silly. I grew up with them; even saw Hope on stage at the Palace Theater in Cleveland, Ohio in the old vaudeville days (they also had a picture show). Anyhow, as simple as they were, they were funny in their own way, and I loved Crosby singing, and Dorothy Lamour's vocaling in amour! Saw The Road to Bali on the tube AMC for the umpteenth time, and still enjoyed it; as usual the music is great, and the boys really didn't know how to end it! 6/10

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
The Dumb and Dumber of the early 50s, 14 March 2003
Author: SteveThomp from Victoria, Australia

Road to Bali is one of the two or three best in the Hope-Crosby series, and sees the pair hot-tailing it out of Australia and across to Indonesia, where they are employed as divers by a mysterious islander princess (mind you, the Hollywood representation of Balinese culture tends to look more like Hawaii, but it's of little consequence, the whole thing is merely a stage for the Hope and Crosby routine.) When diving on a wreck the pair are warned about a mysterious sea-god called 'Boga-ten', so Crosby sends down Hope as something of a sacrificial lamb - he then encounters an unconvincing giant squid. They escape and end up in the clutches of an even more unconvincing tribe, in the hands of none other than General Burkhalter from 'Hogan's Heroes', who decides that sacrifice to a volcano is the best option...

The comedy is classic 'Road' - the pair stroll from situation to situation, taking humourous potshots at each other, making in-jokes about the entertainment industry, and occasionally bursting into song. Dorothy Lamour provides the female presence, love interest and 'straight person' to the duo's persistent childishness and oneupmanship. Crosby invariably comes out the winner, such as in the competition for Lamour's romantic interest (it seems she only likes Hope because he resembles a pet chimpanzee she had as a child.) It's all good fun, if slightly politically incorrect these days, but still holds up pretty well.

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10 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
The Bob and Bing Show, 22 May 2005

Author: Lechuguilla from Dallas, Texas

In this very lighthearted comedy, Bob and Bing ham it up in the South Pacific, in search of women and adventure. The plot, which involves deep-sea diving for sunken treasure, is super shallow ... so to speak. But of course the film is just an excuse to highlight the talents of the comic and the crooner. And talent they had. But here, neither the jokes nor the songs are memorable. Fortunately, Dorothy Lamour is on hand to spice things up. The sets are mildly interesting, in a tacky sort of way.

For me, the real value of the "road" movies is the perspective they bring to cinema viewing. My ... how movies have changed in fifty years, and not necessarily for the better. "Road To Bali" wouldn't fly today ... or float, for that matter. But for fans of Hope and Crosby, the film is a pleasant, harmless diversion, a reminder of a more innocent, bygone era in film-making.

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
The Bali High equivalent of Flying High, 26 January 2006

Author: ptb-8 from Australia

On a scale of one to a million this rates about a 999,999 on the silly scale. In colour and with beautiful production values ROAD TO BALI made in 1952 contains as many up to date movie and social references as an encyclopedia written by Ludwig Von Drake. In a huge theatre these ROAD films must have lifted the roof with laughter, and as a DVD diversion in 2006 any of them can be a generous and loony mood lifter. There is actually many laugh out loud moments still to be had even if you weren't born or aware of life in the early 50s. THE ROAD TO BALI (pronounced "Bally" by Americans; "Barley" by the rest of us) is basically flat-out hilarious with quips and ad libs galore. Even if you cringe at Bing Crosby as I do, there is enough genuinely funny lines and situations and terrible gags to overwhelm you...much like THE PRODUCERS released this year insists we find it relentlessly dementedly funny. To me Bob Hope has always been Daffy Duck (Groucho Marx was Bugs Bunny) and it is his vaudeville lunacy that carries Crosby inbetween squabbling over Lamour and pushing through all parts of the set. This film has some excellent special effects, very admirable for '52. A hilarious cameo from Jane Russell is the cherry on the icing. Some big dance scenes are an added bonus. Fun fun and demented fun. What a year 1952 was for hilarious films (look 'em up).

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Silly fun, 4 July 2004
Author: ctomvelu from usa

Not the boys' best, but hardly their worst. That honor falls to ROAD TO SINGAPORE, with ROAD TO HONG KONG a close second. In their only color ROAD outing, Bing and Bob end up in Bali by way of Australia (don't ask) and go deep-sea diving for lost treasure. Along the way they encounter sultry princess Dorothy Lamour, a boatload of bad guys and a giant squid. The film gets sillier and progressively less funny as it goes along, but it also contains some priceless bits (check out the flute-playing segment and the boys singing and dancing in kilts) and terrific cameos (Jerry Lewis even pops in for a second or two). I suspect no one under 30 is going to give a good goddam about these now-creaky ROAD pictures and their long-dead stars, and all the reputed ad-libbing they did. For those who have faint interest in Hope and Crosby, I would recommend one of the following flicks to see how funny these guys could truly be: ROAD TO MOROCCO, ROAD TO UTOPIA or ROAD TO RIO, in that order. By the way, ROAD TO BALI has just been reissued as part of a series of classic out-of-copyright flicks that are going for $1.50 apiece and are available in many discount and drug chains -- and which is how I happened to see this film again after many years.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
This was the first Bob Hope movie I ever saw on TV, when I was a kid., 28 July 2003
Author: Carycomic from Torrington, CT, USA

And, it was the only one of the "Road to..." movies that he and Bing Crosby ever did in Technicolor. The ad-libbed asides to the audience were something I had never seen or heard of before! Even more of a delightful surprise was the cameo appearance by General Burkhalter as a South Sea island chief!! The songs weren't bad, either. * "The Merry-Go-Run-Around" is probably my second-favorite song of Bob's. "Silver Bells" and "Thanks for the Memories" naturally tie for first-place.* With Bob having died this past Sunday, nostalgia channels like AMC and TCM will no doubt include this, and all his other films, in some kind of marathon movie memorial. *Which they really should have done BACK ON HIS CENTENNIAL!* Oh, well. Thanks to you, Bob, for all my merry, mirth-filled memories.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
BobBing on the Ocean Waves..., 10 September 2005
Author: JoeytheBrit from www.moviemoviesite.com

The sixth of the duo's 'Road to…' movies is a typically fast-moving adventure that has virtually no plot, relying instead on the interplay between the two male stars who, it has to be said, formed one of the better comic acts during the forties and fifties. This is the only Road movie in colour, and the screen is saturated with it. It's also saturated with a number of beautiful babes in bikinis who form the subject of both Bing and Bob's lust when they're not focusing on third member of the Road triumvirate, Dorothy Lamour, modeling yet another succession of sarongs. It's all good fun: the jokes come thick and fast and, although the meaning of many of them is a little obscure today, plenty of them hit the mark. The songs, provided by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen, are also pretty good – especially Moonflowers, sung by Lamour. Look out for a host of cameos, including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Crosby's brother Bob, Jane Russell and Humphrey Bogart (sort of).

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