ROAD TO ZANZIBAR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 117, 19 September 1941, Page 16

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR

(Paramount)

ROM the Santa Fe Trail I got on the Road to Zanzibar- and found it much lighter going. The first thing

to be said about Road to Zanzibar is that Bing Crosby sings only two or three times in the whole picture, which may be good news to people who dislike crooners (see recent controversy) and sad news indeed to people who admire Mr. Crosby’s style of singing. But Road to Zanzibar is only very incidentally a musical picture, and Crosby’s singing is little more than a lazy accompaniment to the more _ sentimental moments. Comedy is the predominating note, crazy comedy in very much the same manner as in Road to Singapore, the previous Crosby-Bob Hope Dorothy Lamour picture. Zanzibar is just as amusing as Singapore, probably because it is the same place. At any rate, if the natives look different, the scenery is the same. : Crosby and Hope are the itinerate proprietors of a circts act which consists of a series of daring exploits by Hope, who is billed ‘successively as Fearless Frazier the Human Cannon-ball, Fearléss Frazier the Human Bat,’ and Fearless Frazier the man who wrestles with .octopuses and gorillas and anything else that comes along. Crosby, for his part, thinks up new ideas and pulls the trigger in the Human Cannon-ball act. In a slave market in Zanzibar, funnily enough, they run slap bang into Dorothy Lamour, who is up for sale. Naturally enough, they buy her, not pausing for a moment ’to realise that her American accent is, to say the least, peculiar in the’ circumstances. Then, before you can say Dr. Livingstone, Hope and Crosby are both in love with their purchase, and the party is wandering around in circles in Darkest Africa on an insane safari, :

"Safari so good," says Crosby, and then, presto, he and Bob Hope take the wrong turning and are captured by cannibals who decide that they must be gods. To make sure, they. pitch Hope into a cage with a gorilla and stand back to see what happens. Fearless Frazier wrestles ferociously and has the gorilla in trouble with a pile driver and a couple of short arm scissors, but the gorilla retaliates with a headlock and an aeroplane spin and then ... but be reassured, the fade-out is quite conventional, and once again Crosby gets girl. It’s a lively farce, with some first rate gagging by Crosby and Hope, who are a clever pair of comics. Dorothy Lamour, who wore an abbreviated version of her famous sarong in Road to Singapore, this time appears fully clad. Heigh ho!