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Road to Morocco
USA 1942
produced by Paramount
directed by David Butler
starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Anthony Quinn, Dona Drake, Vladimir Sokoloff, Mikhail Rasumny, George Givot, Leon Belasco, Sara Berner, Monte Blue, Harry Cording, Yvonne De Carlo, Cy Kendall, Louise La Planche, Kermit Maynard, Richard Loo, Dan Seymour, Stanley Price, Nestor Paiva
written by Frank Butler, Don Hartman
Road to ..-series, Hope & Crosby
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Being shipwrecked because Bob Hope went smoking in the powderroom,
Bob Hope & Bing Crosby soon find themselves on a camel taking tem
through the desert on the Road to Morocco. Eventually they reach a city,
but as they are out of food & money, Crosby soon sells Hope into
slavery, only to be forced by the spirit of his aunt Lucy (Bob Hope
again) to free him again. But when he finally finds Hope, Hope seems to
have found paradise, spending his time in the arms of a beautiful
princess (played of course by Dorothy Lamour - even the title song says
"I bet you nine to five that we'll meet Dorothy Lamour"), who
wants to marry him. But Crosby, having lied eyes on Lamour himself,
decides to stick around to win the girl over ... which isn't the hard
part, as she soon falls for him, but stillinsists on marrying Bob Hope -
as it turns out she does so because of a prediction that foresees her
first husband's violent death within a week after the wedding, while her
second husband will have a very long life. Seems that Hope is at the
butt-end of this deal, & everyone at the princess's court is against
him, wanting him to die - well, everyone except for servant girl Dona
Drake, who has fallen in love with him & who lets him in on the
truth. But when Hope finally decides to not marry the princess after all
& give her to Bing Crosby, the prediction has already proved to be a
misinterpretation. So it seems there would be a satisfying ending after
all, with Crosby (as always) getting Dorothy Lamour while Hope would end
up with Dona Drake ... until Kassim (Anthony Quinn), the man the
princess was originally promised to, shows up, who kidnaps both Lamour
& Dona Drake & abandons our heroes in the desert. Still, in the
end everything turns out ok when the boys catch up with Kassim, his men
& the girls again & sabotage Kassim's & Lamour's wedding
with everything from farting pillows to exploding cigarettes. The last
scene shows our heroes with their respective girls on a boat to New York
- until Bob Hope goes smoking into the powderroom - again... This
3rd in the series of Bob Hope's, Bing Crosby's & Dorothy Lamour's
Road-movies is their take on the Arabian Nights theme that deals with
the cliches of the genre in a (for its time typical but today almost
refreshing) careless manner that might today be considered politically
incorrect by some annoying know-it-alls & dim-witted do-gooders, but
that would be missing all the fun, wouldn't it ? However as always with
the Road-movies the humour of this one would originate not so much from
the gags themselves let alone the plot but from the great - & often
antagonistic - chemistry of the leading trio, who are actually repeating
the same formula for a third time - & they would, in the movie,
actually comment on that quite frequently (e.g. in the end Dorothy
Lamour says "... somehow I've got the feeling we have been through
all this before.").
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