It's as if, following a decade of beyond-lame comedies, Bob Hope decided what was missing was a little seriousness. So in `Cancel My Reservation,' his character feuds with his wife, and gets accused of a murder he didn't commit. Then, he really gets going and tosses social commentary into the mix with a Native American sub-plot. Cancel my RESERVATION get it? Hope tries to crack his jokes as per usual, with his crooked grin, rakish fedora and duck-toed strut. But the snap is gone, and as the villains, Ralph Bellamy and Forrest Tucker don't get the jokes anyway; they sit around and look dyspeptically into the camera, which the director had apparently nailed to the floor before walking away. Maybe he was trying to find the lighting director, because the quality of the film looks sub-high school videotape. In what has come to be known, among Hope aficionados, as the `Dina Merrill' role, Eva Marie Saint plays Hope's wife, clinging to some dignity in front of the camera while probably wringing her agent's neck behind it. Meanwhile, Chief Dan George sits on a mountain and grunts as Hope tries and fails to make jokes at his expense. Some Hope movies of the 1960s were so bad they were endearing, and they reward repeated viewings. But this one is just morbid. Seen once, you won't remember its details, but you may carry around a weird, unpleasant feeling for some time.
Review of Cancel My Reservation
