MY FAVOURITE BLONDE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 191, 19 February 1943, Page 8

MY FAVOURITE BLONDE

(Paramount)

ERE is another hillock of entertainment on the long flat plain across which we picture-goers are at present

travelling (how far away the mountains seem!). Or ‘perhaps I might liken this film to a little oasis in the desert where we can at least replenish our water-bottles from the babbling spring of Bob Hope’s humour, though if we are looking for anything more substantial in the way of a story or even a few ideas we won't get it. The story in fact belongs to the Harold Lloyd era when, for some unlikely reason, the hero (with heroine) was invariably pursued by misfortune and villainy in and out of farcical situations from the first reel to the last. In this new comedy Bob Hope is the football of fate and Madeleine Carroll is his favourite blonde, for whose sake he allows himself to be ‘ booted right across the American Continent. Miss Carroll, you see, is a British agent entrusted with a Secret Message much desired by the enemy. With the naughty Narzees hot on her heels she firmly attaches herself to Hope, a vaudeville artist who is taking Percy, his performing penguin, to Hollywood to become a movie star. Thereafter they share a series of narrow-squeak adventures which only Percy and the audience can properly be said to enjoy, but in which Hope’s special brand of foolery and wise-cracking finds full play. Whatever else My Favourite Blonde may be, it certainly isn’t dull: indeed it might be said of any such film that while there’s Hope there’s life.