On the Road With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Collection (Road to Singapore/Road to Zanzibar/Road to Morocco/Road to Utopia)

Description

They are some of the best-loved film comedies ever created. Now, four of the most popular "Road" pictures, starring the unbeatable screen duo of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, are here together in this deluxe DVD collection. Join Bing and Bob as they travel the world and experience rollicking, fun-filled misadventures in the company of the alluring Dorothy Lamour in such screen gems as Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco and Road to Utopia. You'll laugh yourself silly with four of the titles that made Hope and Crosby one of the most successful comedy teams of the 1940s and which continue to charm and entertain audiences of all ages today.

Customer Reviews:

Four roads to fun.......2007-07-29

There are many great comedies nowadays, but there are very few great comedy teams. In the old days, you could have the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello: teams that were greater than the sum of their parts. (What was Abbott without Costello or Moe without Curly and Larry?) Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, on the other hand, each were successful on their own, yet they are also recognized as a team in a way that even modern combinations like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are not. And the series of films that made them a famous team were the Road Pictures, the first four (of seven) of which are on the DVD On the Road with Bob Hope.

Actually, the Hope/Crosby team was actually a trio, with Dorothy Lamour as the woman who always came between the two. In the first Road movie, Road to Singapore, she is an island girl taken in by the two of them after they get her away from her nasty employer. The two are sailors fleeing commitment in the U.S. by taking refuge on a tropical island. In the second movie, Road to Zanzibar, they are showmen in Africa who escort Lamour and Una Merkel through the jungle, unaware that the two women are actually con artists.

In Road to Morocco, the two find themselves in a desert nation. Crosby sells Hope into slavery, which turns out to be a lot better than it sounds, when it turns out he has to marry a princess played by Lamour. What Hope doesn't know is that her first husband is destined to die, clearing the way for a long second marriage; what Lamour doesn't know is that the prediction is based on faulty information. Though Hope always seems to lose Lamour to Crosby by the end of the movie, Road to Utopia shows Hope and Lamour old and long-married before flashing back to a time when they were in Alaska looking for a gold mine.

Plot is almost incidental in these movies, merely a means to move from one gag to another. Although I doubt they were the first to do so, they often seem to recognize that they are in movies. For example, in Road to Utopia, Hope calls a mountain his bread-and-butter: it suddenly gets a circle of stars and becomes the Paramount logo. Anything can happen - even animals talk - and it is all a lot of fun. Not every joke works, but Hope and Crosby's chemistry carry the films. For some silly, old-fashioned movie comedy, this foursome fits the bill nicely.

A RETURN TO NORMALCY.......2007-06-08

HAVING SEEN ALL OF THE ROAD MOVIES IN YEARS PAST, IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE ONCE AGAIN TO HEAR WONDERFUL VOICES, & COMEDIC ACTING AT SUCH A HIGH LEVEL. MUSIC & COMEDY DOES NOT HAVE TO BE VULGAR TO BE ENTERTAINING. WHERE HAVE YOU GONE BING CROSBY?

So Happy.......2007-04-27

I looked for the Road To movies a few years back with no luck. I checked back recently, and was pleased to find this collection of the first four- and, arguably, the best four- films in the series. The package is nice, and the movies are on one double-sided DVD, which is a nice change from the unnecessarily disc-heavy sets we see so often. The transfer of the movies isn't perfect, but they're old, and it's still fantastic in both sound and picture. All four movies are wonderful, though Road To Singapore is a bit slow in coming off the ground. Hope and Crosby are revered as one of the best comedy duos of all time, and this set proves why. I'm young, and I love these movies. They're great fun for all ages, and I highly recommend getting them. Especially for that price!

On the Road..........2007-03-10

Including four of the seven films in the series, "On the Road with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby" is a collection that I'm proud to own. The Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road" movies are a set of classic comedy musicals that are pointless but funny! This can only be appreciated by someone who understands the relationship between Hope and Crosby and the jokes that apply to the era. A great collection for the Hope, Crosby, or Lamour fan.

Enjoyable!.......2007-01-12

Couldn't wait to get this DVD and it was worth the wait. Got a charge out of seeing Bob and Bing together. Must order the other "Road" films.

Average customer rating:

"He Musta' Seen the Picture!"
Excellent Road Picture
Classic Hollywood
WONDERFUL MOVIE, AWFUL BOX
Not quite a classic, but darn fun

Road to Zanzibar
Starring: Bing Crosby , Bob Hope , Dorothy Lamour , Una Merkel , and Eric Blore
Director: Victor Schertzinger
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005UMFA
Release Date: 2002-03-05

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The second Road movie from Paramount Pictures finds barnstorming con artists Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope) at liberty after their act goes haywire. (In these movies, Crosby generally lures the suckers into the tent, while Hope is always stuck getting shot out of the cannon.) A phony map to a diamond mine brings our boys into the middle of Africa, which means there's a good chance they'll end up sitting in a cauldron while natives perform a cannibal dance around them. These stereotypes would be offensive if the movie wasn't actively parodying the kind of jungle movie popular in 1941 (just as Road to Morocco would satirize the Arabian nights picture). Dorothy Lamour is along for the ride, of course, and her scene in a tight clinch with Hope established a tradition of steamy comic exchanges through the series (as she croons a love song to him, he checks to see if his wallet is still in his pocket). This is the first Road movie to actively wink at the audience; in one scene, Lamour mocks the way movies always have characters break out into song in the middle of nowhere with a full orchestra backing--which is exactly what happens next. The chatter between Crosby and Hope already feels improvised, and it should be noted that the secret of their chemistry is not a sentimental friendship but a cheerfully hostile rivalry between the two characters, a cheeky approach that must've delighted audiences used to the Andy Hardy niceness of most Hollywood movies of that era. Oh, and they do their patty-cake routine, too. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

"He Musta' Seen the Picture!".......2005-04-29

Bing and Bob's second outing is about as much fun as you can have at the movies. Bing's "Rhythm on the River" director of the previous year, Victor Schertzinger, allowed the boys to ad-lib so much screenwriters Don Hartman and Frank Butler must have been frantically turning pages trying to see where that line came from! The end result of Bing and Bob's great chemistry was a delightfully funny film with a couple of nice songs and a formula that lovely Dorothy Lamour and the boys would make legendary.

The film has a hilarious opening as Fearless Frazier (Bob) is about to be shot out of a cannon at a carnival by his pal Chuck (Bing). When things go south and the carnival burns to the ground, they take the show on the road. Chuck always has the ideas, as usual, which have "Fearless" doing everything from wrestling an octopus to becoming the human bat. One of Chuck's greatest ideas is to put Fearless in a lead coffin and submerge it in water. As for how Fearless is to escape, well Chuck hasn't quite worked out all the details yet!

And so it goes. There is some usual nonsense about a diamond mine the boys get hoodwinked into buying and in turn snooker someone else into buying, but it's only an excuse for the boys to end up in darkest Africa with the gorgeous Lamour. Donna Latour (Lamour) and her pal Julia (Una Merkel) are running a con pretending to be captured by slave traders when Julia discovers all that dough Chuck and Hubert (Fearless!) made off their diamond mine map and the girls decide to take them on safari, and take them for a ride!

Lamour is sexy and mischievous in her knee high socks and gorgeous hats but begins to worry her pal Julia when she starts to fall for one of the boys. Fearless thinks it's him, of course, when she gets his motor going singing "You're Dangerous" on a moonlit night. But the audience knows it's Chuck, even if there is a complication involving the rich guy named J. Theodore Bradley she's suppose to marry.

Some of the best moments come when the boys get lost and discover some drums in an old cave and begin to have fun. You can guess the rest! Will the boys be supper for the natives in the interior of darkest Africa? Will Lamour go with her heart and go for Chuck? It's certainly fun finding out as Bing and Bob throw the script out the window, filling Zanzibar with their easygoing charm and funny one-liners.

Dorothy Lamour is really pretty here and was the perfect choice to partner with the boys. They just seem like they belong together, both then and now. Victor Young does the music score and Bing gets to sing to Lamour while they're rowing on the river. Watching this one is a fun way to remeber Bing and Bob, who are no longer with us. But as long as great films like this one are available, their memories will remain forever.

Excellent Road Picture.......2005-01-22

This road picture is my off again, on again pick for the best one. Utopia and Zanzibar both are excellent.

The first half hour of this movie just flies by everytime I watch it. It always seems like the pace slows down once they hook up with Dorothy Lamour. Nothing against Dottie, per se, but she is not funny. Great actress, great singer, but she couldn't get a laugh if her life depended on it. Some pretty good lines are given to her, and they fall flat every time.

But the boys are in top form here. Great scene at the night club where they are forced to do an impromptu dance and comedy routine.

The plot doesn't always make sense, but it doesn't seem to matter. I read where the competition between Bing and Bob to be the funnier guy was pretty intense during the filming of Zanzibar ... and maybe that's why the final product is so very funny.

A lot of laughs in The Road to Zanzibar.

Classic Hollywood.......2003-06-26

No one dose it better then Bob Hope and Bing Crosby! I love this movie.If you like classic hollywood you will love this one.

WONDERFUL MOVIE, AWFUL BOX.......2003-02-27

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR has always been one of my two or three favorite Road movies, in part because it's more of a comedy and less of a musical than many entries as well as having the bonus of having that great comedienne Una Merkel along for the ride. And the great Dorothy Lamour is incredibly sexy here (wasn't she always!!)

Now for the "awful packaging" why on earth has MCA Universal Video failed to picture Ms. Lamour on the box as well as the boxes of nearly ALL of the other Road movies. She was an EQUAL star to Hope and Crosby - one of the biggest women stars of the era. She has a lot of fans even today who are probably passing on the prerecorded tapes to this series because of this slight. Wake up Universal and reissue this series picturing the third STAR of these movies on the boxes! (Ms. Lamour is pictured on the DVD box to this ROAD movie but not on several of the other films.)

Not quite a classic, but darn fun.......2002-05-28

This is not the best of the "Road" pictures, but it's still a lot of fun to watch the chemistry between Hope and Crosby. The plot is a bit preposterous, and just how dumb can Hope's character be to be anything but Fearless? However, the hijinks are first rate scams, and there are nice turns by Dorothy Lamour and Una Merkel. The tunes are not the best of the "Road" series, although Bing's voice always seems stronger in films than in comparably dated records. Get this one not because it's a classic (not quite), but just because it's fun.

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