Road to Singapore

The first of the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road" series, and not the best.

What's wrong with it? People have complained that it is plot heavy but that's a little hard to swallow because the plot could be used to stuff a portobello mushroom.

The problem, I think, is that it's too serious, if you can believe it. When one of the guys loses Dorothy Lamour he acts as if he's really hurt, which destroys the ethos of the film. Too many songs, although none of them is worse than any of the ones that were to follow.

No ipsative gags. How could there be? There can't be any reference to earlier movies like this because there were no earlier movies like this. Bob Hope acts as if he is trying to follow the plot, instead of improvising and winging it. He hasn't become quite the cowardly miles gloriosus of the later films. Crosby is saddled with a past from which he's trying to escape. And the gags -- though lingered over -- just aren't there.

Yet it's not a bad movie. Two guys go to Southeast Asia and meet a girl. Everybody's good humored. It's diverting.

You won't be depressed after you see it.