Road To
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There had been comedy teams in movies before, of course, and fast-paced dialogue, but the Road pictures introduced something new. The interplay between Groucho and Chico Marx, say, or George Burns and Gracie Allen, had an abstract, almost surreal quality. The witty repartee of 1930s screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey or Bringing Up Baby was too polished and stylized to be mistaken for anything but movie dialogue. Hope and Crosby seemed like ordinary guys — like Hope and Crosby, in fact — perfectly attuned to each other's thoughts, moods, obsessions and vulnerabilities.
—Richard Zoglin, in his essay on Road to Morocco for the National Film Registry
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The Road to ... movies are a series of comedy films starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, usually with Dorothy Lamour. Each of the films is a parody of a particular film genre.
- Road to Singapore (1940)
- Road to Zanzibar (1941)
- Road to Morocco (1942)
- Road to Utopia (1946)
- Road to Rio (1947)
- Road to Bali (1952) -- The only one in color
- The Road to Hong Kong (1962) -- with Joan Collins
The franchise inspired some other movies, including The Road to El Dorado.
Road to Morocco was added to the National Film Registry in 1996.
Road to Bali fell into the public domain because its copyright was not renewed in time once it lapsed. Watch it at Wikimedia Commons or the Internet Archive.
The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Road To franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Bob Hope addressed remarks directly to the audience several times per movie.
- The Cameo: Several, particularly in the last two films.
- Dueling Stars Movie
- Genre Savvy: Anybody who doesn't fall for the usual distraction.
- Harpo Does Something Funny
- Heterosexual Life Partners
- Large Ham
- Oscar Bait: Lampshaded and spoofed in many of the movies, notably in Road to Morocco.
- Overly Polite Pals
- Road Movie: the Trope Codifier
- Running Gag: "Patty-cake, patty-cake..."
- The Smurfette Principle: Roger Ebert called this trope "Dorothy Lamour Syndrome" after her role(s) in the franchise.
- Universal Adaptor Cast
- Vagabond Buddies
- Vitriolic Best Buds
- We Need a Distraction: That's what the "patty-cake" routine was for.
Individual movies provide examples, straight or parodied, of:
Road to Singapore
- Early Installment Weirdness: Road to Singapore is a lot more subdued and conventional than the films that followed.
- Medicine Show
Road to Zanzibar
- Captured by Cannibals: In Road to Zanzibar, with the cannibals thinking Hope and Crosby are white gods... until, that is, the cannibals decide to test their divinity by having Hope get into a side-splittingly hilarious wrestling match with a gorilla.
- Darkest Africa: Once again, from Road to Zanzibar. It uses all the standard Pulp Africa tropes and subverts the heck out of them.
- Invisible Backup Band: Discussed Trope
- Pardon My Klingon
- Travel Montage
Road to Morocco
Tropes specific to Road to Morocco are listed on that work's page.
Road to Utopia
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey
- Drink Order: "Lemonade... in a dirty glass!"
- The Gay Nineties
- Greek Chorus: Humorist Robert Benchley.
- Identical Grandson: Used to hilarious effect at the end of the picture. ("We adopted him.")
- Logo Joke
Road to Rio
- The Cavalry: They arrive just after the fact in Rio, although it's not for lack of trying.
- MacGuffin
Road to Bali
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Hope's magic flute in Bali, which backfires horribly when Crosby tries his hand at it.
- The Cameo: Jane Russell, at the very end of the picture.
The Road to Hong Kong
- Demoted to Extra: Dorothy Lamour, in The Road to Hong Kong. She actually wasn't going to appear in it at all after Crosby insisted on (and got) a younger female lead in Joan Collins, but Hope intervened to at least get her a cameo appearance.
References to the Road to series in other works:
- The Road to El Dorado
- Spies Like Us
- History of the World Part One The "Roman Empire" segment. Mel Brooks and others sing "We're off on the road to Judea!"
- Ishtar
- They Might Be Giants song "Road Movie to Berlin"
- Family Guy episodes "Road to Rhode Island", "Road to Europe", "Road to Rupert", "Road to Germany", and "Road to the Multiverse"
- Taz-Mania episodes "Road To Tasmania", "Return Of The Road To Tasmania Strikes Back" and "Yet Another Road To Tasmania"
- Duckman episode "Road to Dendron"
- The TaleSpin episodes "For Whom the Bell Klangs" and "The Road to Macadamia"
- The Legend of Tarzan episode "Tarzan and the Fugitives"
- The ALFTales cartoon episode "The Aladdin Brothers"