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.
This series provides examples, straight or parodied, of:
- Be Careful What You Wish For:
- In Morocco, Hope's character gets his hands on a magic ring...
- Hope's magic flute in Bali, which backfires horribly when Crosby tries his hand at it.
- Book Ends: Road to Morocco.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Bob Hope addressed remarks directly to the audience several times per movie.
- Aside Glance
- Possibly in Morocco, they need to disguise themselves as locals, and Hope says something about, "No problem; Special Effects will take care of it." Then he calls out, "Hey, Special Effects!" and their clothing is immediately transformed into local garb.
- The Cameo: Several, particularly in the last two films.
- 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.
- The Cavalry: They arrive just after the fact in Rio, although it's not for lack of trying.
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey
- Darkest Africa: Once again, from Road to Zanzibar. It uses all the standard Pulp Africa tropes and subverts the heck out of them.
- 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.
- Drink Order
- Dueling Stars Movie
- Early Installment Weirdness: Road to Singapore is a lot more subdued and conventional than the films that followed.
- The Gay Nineties
- Genre Savvy
- Greek Chorus: Humorist Robert Benchley, in Road to Utopia.
- Harpo Does Something Funny
- Heterosexual Life Partners
- Hollywood Mirage
- Identical Grandson: Used to hilarious effect at the end of Road to Utopia. ("We adopted him.")
- Incredibly Lame Puns
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"Like Webster's dictionary, we're Morocco bound" |
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- Invisible Backup Band
- Large Ham
- Literal Genie
- Logo Joke
- MacGuffin
- Medicine Show
- No Party Like a Donner Party
- Oscar Bait: Lampshaded and spoofed in many of the movies, notably in Road to Morocco.
- Overly Polite Pals
- Pardon My Klingon
- Plot Armor
- Road Movie
- Running Gag: "Pattycake, pattycake.."
- Setting-Off Song
- The Smurfette Principle: Roger Ebert called this trope "Dorothy Lamour Syndrome" after her role(s) in the franchise.
- Sneeze of Doom
- Thirsty Desert
- Title Theme Tune: "We're off on the road to Morocco..."
- Travel Montage
- Universal Adaptor Cast
- Vagabond Buddies
- Vitriolic Best Buds
- We Need a Distraction
References in other works:
- Spies Like Us
- The Road to El Dorado
- 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 Tale Spin 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"
- They Might Be Giants song "Road Movie to Berlin"
- History of the World Part One The "Roman Empire" segment. Mel Brooks and others sing "We're off on the road to Judea!"
- Ishtar