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The Road to Hong Kong
UK 1962
produced by Melvin Frank for Melnor Films
directed by Norman Panama
starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Joan Collins, Robert Morley, Walter Gotell, Felix Aylmer, Alan Gifford, Michele Mok, Katya Douglas, Roger Delgado, Robert Ayres, Mei Ling, Jacqueline Jones, Yvonne Shima, Dorothy Lamour
written by Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, music by Robert Farnon
Road to ..-series, Hope & Crosby
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Somehow, con-men Bob Hope and Bing Crosby get their hands on a top
secret rocket fuel formula, a formula Hope is able to memorize thanks to
some very special drug. The boss (Robert Morley) of a secret Hong
Kong-based society, the 2rd Echelon wants to get this formula to send a
rocket to the moon, so he has lovely Diane (Joan Collins) lure Hope and
Crosby to his underwater headquarters ... to find they have run out of the
drug which is needed to get the formula out of Hope's head. As a
punishment, the Echelon-boss sends the boys on a trip round the moon, on
which Hope manages to remember the formula again - meaning that the image
of the moon obviously makes him remember. The Echelon-boss now wants Diane
to seduce Hope and make him give the formula away, but she has since
learned that the organisation then wants to kill Hope and Crosby and bomb
all of earth's major capitals, so she helps the two escape. This leads to
a slapstick chase all through Hong Kong that includes a musical number
featuring guest star Dorothy Lamour, at the end of which Diane, Hope and
Crosby return to the Echelon headquarters with the authorities in tow who
take care of all the baddies - but not before Diane, Hope and Crosby
stumble into the Echelon's moon-rocket and are rocketed off to an unknown
planet ... 10 years afterthe Road-series seemed
to have run its course with Road To
Bali, Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, who were involved with
earlier episodes of the series, took the franchise to the UK for a final
film, Road to Hong Kong. Often dismissed as a disaster by fans of
the Road-movies, this film though is not all bad: Hope and
Crosby are still pretty funny when they put an effort into it, the
direction is smooth enough to support their comedy, and the mostly British
supporting cast is pretty good and pretty funny in its own right. That
said though, somehow Hope and Crosby's humour seems to be rather out of
date in the early 1960's and doesn't sit too well with the film's James
Bond-ish sci-fi plot that lacks the narrative simplicity the
two need, and while Joan Collins is very pretty here and does show acting
skills, she certainly is no Dorothy Lamour. In all, the whole thing is a
likeable comedy in its own right but pales in comparison to the earlier Road-movies,
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