I have recently re-watched all the Hope & Crosby road pictures and saved this one for last--mostly because it's the hardest to find and because it was their last film. Unfortunately, the decade that separated this and the previous film was too long and the nice momentum from the earlier films was clearly lost. It proves the old saying that 'you can't go back'--as the team probably should have just called it quits after "The Road to Bali".
The problems with "The Road to Hong Kong" are many. The most serious of which is the age of the team. While the jokes might have worked okay with the 40-something Hope and Crosby, here they are positively geriatric and seeing them making googly eyes at very young and pretty ladies just seemed creepy. While Crosby was cast as the suave lover in earlier films, here he just conjured up images of a creepy old man...and Hope wasn't much better. Starring them opposite a young and very sexy Joan Collins (instead of perennial co-star Dorothy Lamour) didn't help matters any, as this only seemed to accentuate that they were just past their prime. The other super-serious problem was the script. You'd think after all this time they'd have held out for a GOOD script, but they didn't. The plot manages to be significantly more weird and outlandish than their previous films and the notion of the team battling super-spies and manning a rocket to space just seemed very forced and stupid.
I remember back in the 1970s before Bing Crosby died that the two men had talked about doing yet another Road Picture. Thank goodness it never got past the talking stage, as given the direction their careers took in this decade, the results would have been horrid--especially in light of the films Hope made in the twilight years of his career. I know that devoted fans might take exception to this review, but as for me, the whole experience in watching "The Road to Hong Kong" was sad...and almost too painful to watch. Like the last films of Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, this film just reaffirms that in comedy it's best to go out on top.
The problems with "The Road to Hong Kong" are many. The most serious of which is the age of the team. While the jokes might have worked okay with the 40-something Hope and Crosby, here they are positively geriatric and seeing them making googly eyes at very young and pretty ladies just seemed creepy. While Crosby was cast as the suave lover in earlier films, here he just conjured up images of a creepy old man...and Hope wasn't much better. Starring them opposite a young and very sexy Joan Collins (instead of perennial co-star Dorothy Lamour) didn't help matters any, as this only seemed to accentuate that they were just past their prime. The other super-serious problem was the script. You'd think after all this time they'd have held out for a GOOD script, but they didn't. The plot manages to be significantly more weird and outlandish than their previous films and the notion of the team battling super-spies and manning a rocket to space just seemed very forced and stupid.
I remember back in the 1970s before Bing Crosby died that the two men had talked about doing yet another Road Picture. Thank goodness it never got past the talking stage, as given the direction their careers took in this decade, the results would have been horrid--especially in light of the films Hope made in the twilight years of his career. I know that devoted fans might take exception to this review, but as for me, the whole experience in watching "The Road to Hong Kong" was sad...and almost too painful to watch. Like the last films of Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, this film just reaffirms that in comedy it's best to go out on top.