Cancel My Reservation (1972) User Reviews

No Hope classic but better than its reputation

[s007davis · 5/10 · 8 May 2004]

Review contains SPOILERS:

Most Bob Hope films released between 1965 and 1972 are, to put it delicately, not considered classic comic cinema by a longshot and "Cancel My Reservation" is no exception. However, compared to "Boy, Did I Get A Wrong Number", "Cancel My Reservation" seems like a celluloid masterpiece.

Essentially, the film plays like a combination of the formula from his 1940s hits like "My Favorite Blonde" and the 1970s NBC Mystery Movie. Hope plays a successful New York TV talk show host who heads to Arizona for a rest/vacation and ends up getting framed for a murder. His wife and co-host(wonderfully played by Eva Marie Saint) heads out west to help him and together the duo go thru a series of detecting and misdadventures before clearing Hope and the obligatory happy ending. Much of the film feels like a pilot for a husband-wife sleuthing team/seriocomic detective show in the manner of "McMillan and Wife" or "Hart to Hart" with Ralph Bellamy, Keenan Wynn, Forrest Tucker, Chief Dan George and the adorable Anne Archer(daughter of Hope's BDIGAWN "wife" Marjorie Lord) as the guest stars and featuring cameos by John Wayne, Johnny Carson, Flip Wilson and the ubiquitous Bing Crosby. While never a particularly "good" film, "Reservation" remains watchable thanks to some nicely photographed Arizona scenery and a thankful lack of "blue screen" except during the rather obvious scene of Hope on a motorcycle. "Reservation" also benefits from giving Hope a wonderful leading lady in Miss Saint. The 1954 Best Actress Academy Award Winner sparkles as Hope's co-star and the two of them have terrific chemistry together. I wish that the other film they made together, 1956's "That Certain Feeling", would become available on home video so I could see that too. The Hope/Saint duo beats the Hope/Phyllis Diller duo anyday IMHO.

Bottom line: if you've never seen Hope or Miss Saint before I recommend you pick another of their films to start with. For Hope, "They Got Me Covered" or any of his "Road" films while for Miss Saint, I recommend "North By Northwest" or "36 Hours" first. But, if you are already a fan of either star, "Cancel My Reservation" makes for painless enough star vehicle viewing as a late movie on the AMC channel.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

Definitely not Hope-less

[BaronBl00d · 6/10 · 10 July 2016]

I, like many other viewers have stated, got an opportunity to see this as a youngster on TV...probably late one night back when television stations would play movies like this into the wee hours of the evening/morning. I didn't remember much. Of course there was Bob Hope. I remembered Keenan Wynn for some reason and knew it was about murder in the desert. Well, I finally acquired a copy and was pleasantly surprised. Yes, Bob Hope's game is off. He is 69 or so here(looks absolutely incredible for his age). He turns out a one liner almost every minute he is on screen - which is almost every minute for the film. Most fail, but after awhile I was laughing at some of them - some because they were pretty good and others because he was trying SO terribly hard. Hope glides through the film with his typical Hope persona. Enjoyable but nothing great to be sure. The supporting cast is also equally enjoyable. Keenan Wynn playing a crusty sheriff with his usual flair for such roles. Ralph Bellamy and Forrest Tucker as a local rancher and his henchman. Bellamy is wheelchair-bound and as always quite good with dialog. Tucker looks tired though. Eve Marie saint plays Hope's wife. She is okay but has a dazzling set of legs which she shows off quite a bit. This is Anne Archer's first major film role and she is stunning - a buffet for the eyes and also quite good in her role. The plot is something out of the 40s with a body, then a missing body, and that kind of stuff. Nothing great but watching established pros work with inferior material makes it rise to a level no-talents could not achieve. There is a dream sequence with cameos by John Wayne, Johnny Carson, Flip Wilson, and old Bing Crosby himself. It is pretty brief but nice nonetheless. So this stroll down memory lane was enjoyable. Scenes I saw decades ago started to come back to me, and I will most definitely watch the film again soon as well as check out some more Bob Hope films. Honestly, I miss this stuff. Nothing today, though there is awesome television and good filmmaking abounding, creates the same kind of feel for me as that stuff I watched as a kid. Guess that is how it will be for young people today too.

Not one of Hope's best!

[JohnHowardReid · 4/10 · 30 September 2016]

Murder and comedy don't mix too well here. Bob Hope is far too flip to be a believable character and his old-fashioned moralizing against women's lib is often embarrassingly inept. Even some of his customary comedy asides are presented without his usual relish and he sometimes seems tired and disappointingly lacking in his usual sparkle. The TV-style direction with its over-emphasis on close-ups draws more than usual audience attention to inadequacies and infelicities in both dialogue and characterization. It's also noticeable that a very obvious stunt man stands in for Hope in even the mildest scenes involving physical activity. Fortunately, location filming helps regain audience interest. Bogart's direction is more imaginative here too. Maybe Gordon Oliver, the producer (he also plays Willie Sparker in the movie) stayed behind in the studio. Eva Marie Saint does what she can with some terrible lines, but the support cast (with the exception of Keenan Wynn's grossly exaggerated portrait of the sheriff) comes off best, particularly Anne Archer as a forward sub-heroine and Ralph Bellamy and Forrest Tucker as the villains of the piece.

Cancel My Studio Contract

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 29 November 2007]

After Cancel My Reservation Bob Hope made no more films for the big screen. It's as if his career ran out of gas in the seventies. Of course with the reception this film got, it was no surprise he stuck to television and military base tours.

When I looked at Cancel My Reservation again for the purposes of writing this review I was dumbfounded to learn that it had been based on a Louis L'Amour western novel, The Broken Gun. Now nobody had ever accused Louis L'Amour of writing comedy, so I'd love to know how one of his gritty western tales became the basis for a Bob Hope film?

Hope plays a TV talk show host who's advised by his doctor to take a needed vacation away from his wife Eva Marie Saint. Seems as though she came on the show as a co-host, kind of like the way Joy Philbin occasionally fills in for Kelly Ripa with Regis and it's grating on his hammy nerves.

Wouldn't you know it but Rapid Robert gets himself involved with not one, not two, but three murders while in Arizona. Bodies just keep popping up around him. Eva Marie comes west to help him solve this, but Nick and Nora Charles, they're not. The only one who believes him is Anne Archer, the stepdaughter of wealthy rancher Ralph Bellamy.

Cancel My Reservation marks the final appearance of Bing Crosby in an unbilled cameo in a Bob Hope film. That was a regular occurrence in the forties and fifties. The sequence is an imaginary one after sheriff Keenan Wynn tells him he could be the subject of mob violence. Hope imagines he's being lynched and he looks over at the crowd and appeals to such folks as Bing, Johnny Carson, John Wayne, and Flip Wilson for help in saving an innocent man. Bing says he furnished the rope for the lynching. Wilson says the devil made him do it. Carson says he hopes to inherit Hope's show and John Wayne says he'd like to help, but it isn't his picture.

By the way with that unbilled cameo, the Duke appears in his career in two films based on Louis L'Amour novels, his classic Hondo and this one.

Most of Hope's films in the sixties and now the seventies are just pale in comparison to the comedy classics of his earlier period. This one may be one of the worst. The gags just fall flat, the biggest laugh is when he tells the sheriff his age is 42 when he's a quite believable 69. John Wayne was finally playing characters his own age, why couldn't Hope?

So if you want to see a good film based on a Louis L'Amour novel, I recommend Hondo.

All Hope is Gone

[mls4182 · 1/10 · 23 January 2022]

This was just painfully bad. The script is just plain dumb and Hope seems resigned to just sleepwalk through it. Even worse is Ann Arrcher who is just plain awful in every single one of her roles.

Hardly worth writing about ...

[Bede · 16 September 2001]

What a horrible little film--so many talented players wasted in a piece of ephemeral tripe! Bob Hope's gags consist mainly of long outdated topical references. He says, 'Johnny Carson' or 'Dick Cavett', and we are supposed to fall about laughing. Hope, by 1972, was far too old for this sort of role. It is a flop as a comedy, is in no sense a mystery, and mostly it is tedious in the extreme. If you see this film on your TV program, avoid it--it will disappoint you.

This one is just morbid.

[mitcj · 1/10 · 15 July 2002]

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.

a fun flick, no more, no less.

[bobjane81 · 7/10 · 1 September 2007]

Unlike many of the these reviewers, Cancel My Reservation does not take itself too seriously. It is no more than a fun flick, without pretensions of high drama. Much of the seemingly stilted dialogue may indeed be deliberate self-parody. The film reminds me of the old Saturday double feature presentations, for those of you who can remember those afternoons at the movies. Relax, and enjoy it as a pleasant diversion, as well as for nostalgic reminders of actors and comics of years past. Bob Hope is a true classic, who provided us with years of pleasure, and who had the courage to tackle many forms of entertainment. He was able to laugh at himself about his film flops, much as Jack Benny did with his The Horn Blows at Midnight. (And the critics are on the mark about the nubile Ms. Archer.)

Thanks for the Memories--of cinematic swill, films that made us ill..

[jake j · 1/10 · 1 August 2002]

"Cancel My Reservation" was premiered at Radio City Music Hall as a fill-in before the "Salute To Spring" show. There was a musicians' union strike at the time and only the film and not the famous Rockettes or the Orchestra were allowed to be presented. So the world's largest (at the time) movie theater had 300 people at the premiere, including Bob and Dolores. It was reported that Bob decided that night that he would never appear in a film again... NOT, astoundingly, because Cancel is one of the saddest and dullest films ever made, but because he felt he looked to old to be considered an appealing leading man. The original book by Louis L'Amour- "The Broken Gun" is a dark, brooding film about the mistreatment of the Native American. According to Bob's agent, this was to be a dramatic film initially, a way for Bob to purge himself from the excrement of his previous 7 cinematic failures. When Bob approached United Artists for the funding, they said they would never finance another of his films, however NBC- with whom Hope had a lifetime contract with (did they think he'd make it to 100?), said they would help if he used Carson, Flip Wilson, etc.- also NBC contract folk circa 1971, if he'd squeeze in a few cameos. Hope is known as one of the richest and (unlike the allegedly mean-spirited but very generous B. Crosby) cheapest as they come. Hope did kick in the remaining money and took (Zero-value) production credit. With the cameos in place and George Marshall refusing to further humiliate his name with another phoned-in direction, Paul Bogart walked off the set of "All In The Family" and Hope gave up hope in giving a dignified "serious" performance as he had done so beautifully on his anthology series in the mid-60's and in "The Seven Little Foys" and "Beau James"- both Oscar-worthy turns. "Cancel My Reservation", as in Hope's later career, was another cruel disappointment that served as his cinematic epitaph. In only seven years (1965-72), Hope's films disintegrated from high corn, to low camp, to oppressive gloom. Thanks for the memories, Bob. R.I.P.

Agreeable diversion

[gridoon2024 · 6/10 · 18 April 2022]

Old-fashioned, leisurely paced private-eye (though there are no actual private eyes on the screen) spoof, littered with one-liners and then-topical pop references, some of which will mean nothing to today's viewers, though others will be caught by almost everyone even today. The bad guys are revealed in the middle of the picture, and the direction and - especially - the music score make the movie play like a prolonged TV series episode. But Bob Hope's lines have a reasonably high success ratio, and he is complemented by two lovely co-stars: classy, milf-y Eva Marie Saint (there is a showstopping frame of her legs), and fresh, bodacious Anne Archer. **1/2 out of 4.

He's 42?! Who are they trying to fool?!

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 27 April 2017]

I am only a mild fan of the films of Bob Hope. But one thing I noticed is that in general, his older films tend to very enjoyable and the newer ones seem tired at best. Comsidering this was Hope's last starring role, you can pretty much guess that I did not enjoy the picture...though I was hoping it would be more watchable.

When the story begins, Dan and Sheila Bartlett (Bob Hope and Eva Marie Saint) are a married couple who do a daily talk show. According to the script, Dan is 42...which is utterly ridiculous as Hope was pushing 70 at the time! Well, the pair are at each other's throats and Dan needs a break--so he takes a vacation on his own in the middle of no where in Arizona. Soon after arriving at his rental, he finds a body....and only moments later the body disappears. So he goes to find the police...and the police find this same body in his car! Now he's suspected of killing this lady, though the police let him go. That night, when he goes to bed, he kinds a goofy young lady (Anne Archer) naked in his bed. She apparently thought the house was unoccupied. Whatever.

Soon, Mrs. Bartlett arrives to try to help her husband....and soon more bodies start piling up and the couple do the smart thing. She breaks him out of prison and they set about trying to solve the murders!

So does any of this sound funny? Nope...and it looks as if they writers weren't even trying to make a comedy. Apart from Hope's incessant asides (none of which are funny), it's like there was no attempt to make the audience laugh. The overall effect looks like a bad made for TV mystery movie and the film is simply tiresome. Nothing to recommend it.

Great film for the young at heart

[carolc-647-592026 · 8/10 · 28 January 2010]

Lighten up people. It is entertainment. I remember this film when I was young and it was great then and is still is today. Too many people take writing reviews seriously and if you want to watch a good "G" rated movie with a lot of good clean fun, then this is the one. Like Blazing Saddles, it isn't one to take too serious and look for the Oscar nod. I have very fond memories of the first time I saw this movie at a drive in theater. Yes it was fun and no the acting wasn't that great, but how many movies today get so much attention with less. If you want to turn back the clock and enjoy a movie with nothing under the covers except an old comedy, then this is a good one to pick.

Have fun and enjoy and look for all the actors you may recognize.

Ugh

[steelerstwin · 3/10 · 4 February 2011]

Bob Hope's swan song is pretty lame. Yet somehow, I feel this film is a compelling one to watch and I can't quite put my finger on it.

Hope had sharp wit and was somewhat subversive back in the 40's, but once he got rich he became an unbearable conservative - his shows for the troops nothwithstanding. As such, I think I really enjoyed watching him embarrass himself in this horrific bit of celluloid swill.

This has a lot in common with Preminger's "Skidoo" in that it really does try to be hip and modern without having a clue what that means. Director Bogart doesn't want to seem to move the camera anymore than he has to and so the flick has a very TV movie feel to it... not surprising since Bogart did a lot of TV work - most notably, "All In the Family". For a much better look at what he could do, watch "Mr. Ricco" with Dean Martin. Bogart did a good job in this one, released in 1975.

Bogart wastes what could be an interesting story by failing to utilize some really great southwestern scenery. I'm not sure who the cinematographer was, but they should be beaten, waterboarded and shot as soon as they can be located.

The storyline is very contrived and serves only to allow Hope to joke around and toss out some one-liners as a talk show host on vacation with his much-too-young wife played by the totally wasted here Eva Marie Saint. Toss in marital troubles, Native American preaching and a murder mystery and you've got a tremendous mess. This movie has a "make it up as you go" feel.

The only real reason to watch it is to be amazed at how bad it is, and to watch it unfold, like a train wreck in slow motion. It's like watching your rich, arrogant, drunk uncle soil himself on the dance floor at a wedding reception - and you like it because the old bastard is such a jerk.

I need some tummy tones. I'll stop now.

About as expected...

[Elrod · 1 October 1998]

"Cancel My Reservation" is just what it wants to be. In other words, it's a very successful movie, even if it's just successful at being completely confusing and silly. Bob Hope fumbles through this movie looking old and confused (even this far back), and the dated sexual roles and racist overtones are just one more factor that makes the viewer wince. There is a cute sight gag or two, but the movie just seems like a drawn out Hope skit from a television special. Fans of Johnny Carson or John Wayne can catch short cameos that will bring a smile.

As painful as the cactus in the background.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 5 November 2023]

At least though they had interesting shapes. By this time, Hope's film career had been in horrible shape for over a decade. Basically, he was just playing himself, reciting his lines like he did with staff written jokes on his all-star TV specials. That, plus unbelievably ridiculous ploys, makes these films unwatchable even if they did as much stuffing as Hope was getting into his far too tight pants with guest stars. Try not to roll your eyes at Bob's even then dated topical references, continuing gags at guest star Bing Crosby's expense even before old orange seed even popped up.

Once again, the 70+ year old Hope (claiming to be 42, which would mean that Hope was only 3 when he appeared on Broadway in "Roberta") gets a much younger leading lady, the still beautiful Oscar winning Eva Marie Saint, looking like his daughter. They're not really a believable Lunt and Fontanne like couple of TV talk show hosts, and jealous of his wife's success, chauvinist Hope heads out west to Arizona for some R&R, but she heads there to rescue him when he's wrongfully accused of murdering a young woman.

The huge ensemble includes a young Anne Archer as a hippie that Hope finds in his bed, Keenan Wynn and Doodles Weaver as the local law, Ralph Bellamy and Forrest Tucker as the twi heavy's, and additional cameos by John Wayne, Flip Wilson and Johnny Carson. How this ever got made is a huge mystery, especially considering that the book was set in the old west and couldn't possibly have been right for old ski nose Hope. Poor direction by TV director Paul Bogart also impacts the film, a notorious flop that deserved it. The 70's had their classic movies, but outside films by Simon, Allen and Brooks, not a memorable decade for comedies, especially considering all the classic sitcoms on the air at the time. It also seemed to take great pleasure in ridiculing native Americans, not wise in the social wars of that era.

Abandon Hope

[miriamwebster · 1/10 · 3 February 2012]

Dreadful semi-serious schlock that is to Bob Hope's career what Caprice was to Doris Day's. Apparently realizing rather late in the game that the fluff which had been box-office gold during their movie heydays (enjoyable as it may have been when they were years younger and material was fresh) seemed mighty passé by standards of later Sixties- early Seventies, both signed on for roles in thriller/mystery roles that just planted their same old characters in darker situations.

Here, Bob is cast as a national TV talk show host who somehow winds up being prime suspect in a series of murders in a corrupt Arizona backwater involving Native Americans. Uh, why doesn't he call a lawyer? Because he is too busy making cornball cracks based on dated advertising slogans (of several years old, even at that time) and catch phrases which weren't funny that funny to begin with and will simply baffle most viewers today. (When Chief Dan George utters a Native American phrase, a comic subtitle explains he is actually saying "Why don't you go water your fern?" Despite a certain desperation appeal that some may appreciate in a campy or almost surreal kitschy "aging comic" sense, just painful!)

Before the very unmysterious mystery is cleared up, there are even gratuitous what-the-huh? cameos by Johnny Carson, John Wayne, Flip Wilson and Bing Crosby. (Jo Anne Worley was apparently busy during the lunch hour when these appearances were shot.) And once everything is cleared up, screen wife Eva Marie Saint announces that Bob, pushing 70 but claiming to be 42!, is about to become a first-time father!!!

Makes one yearn for the sophisticated humor of Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number or Eight on the Lam.

Bob No Hope

[mlangley2 · 2/10 · 17 November 2017]

This I am sorry to say this is the worst Bob Hope movie I have ever seen. The film is about ten years too late for his style of comedy to be considered funny, with both the storyboard and the production values best described as poor.

At first I thought it was a TV movie but no it was a cinema release and I must say I was surprised. The studio executives must have wanted to chuck money away.

In this film Bob Hope is a very old Bob Hope, and it is no surprise to learn that this finished his movie career, although his co star a very good looking Eva Marie Saint, went on to appear in many more movies, TV movies, and TV mini series.

If you are a Bob Hope fan, then watch it especially as it his last movie, but if not, then do not bother.

Bob's last film. 1972

[micksteel86 · 3/10 · 14 January 2014]

CANCEL MY RESERVATION. You've read the other reviews and they're all on the mark. Those who like it are allowed to like it and those who hate it are all correct. Directed by Paul Bogart from television the film looks like a made for TV movie as many features did in this era. In the first five minutes there's a scene in which Bob says he is 42, he was 69 when made this film. He looked great for 69 but he looked early 50's, not 42.

Here's my problem with the film, it's like Bob had to have a one liner every minute so you have 90 bad one liners which are unrelated to the story line or script. One good funny line every five minutes would have done. Strangely, unlike most ordinary films, I think the last ten minutes have made it better. There is a great support cast with nothing to do, but it begs the question as to why Anne Archer had to wait about ten years after this for lead roles. She's gorgeous. Here's the interesting thing, the last last ten minutes which are a bit more serious are good.

Comedy was going through a monumental change at this time and with a bit of thought, some serious jokes about Native Americans could have made this work. And Bob delivers a good line in the final scenes about going to jail for a parking ticket, and it's this line that made me think that this could have been OK.

Dated, uneven

[biduncan67 · 5/10 · 18 March 2020]

The narrator of Louis L'Amour's novel, "The Broken Gun" is a rugged novelist adventurer, a great deal like the author himself. The only character who comes from the book accurately is the evil ranch foreman, Reese, played by Forrest Tucker. Apparently, from the novel's dedication, Louis L'Amour visualized Alan Ladd as Dan, the hero. The William Bendix character would have been the lawman, Riley.

Bob Hope sought to recapture the magic of his vastly superior mystery-comedies, "The Cat and the Canary" and "Ghost Breakers" with Paulette Goddard; "My Favorite Blonde" with Madeleine Carroll; "My Favorite Brunette" with Dorothy L'Amour; and "My Favorite Spy" with Hedy Lamarr. "Cancel My Reservation" suffers from dated gags just meant to get a quick laugh, rather than to move the story ahead.

Paul Bogart directed this picture, in a nominal sense; but Bob was the executive producer. Any credit or blame goes to our star, who was otherwise a great entertainer.

The best scene is a skit within the movie, when Bob visualizes his lynching, attended gleefully by Bing Crosby (of course), Johnny Carson, John Wayne, and the latest hot TV star, Flip Wilson. Johnny observes, "He'll do anything to win an Oscar."

The screenwriter of this movie was Arthur Marx, son of Groucho. Arthur and Bob must have had a major falling out, since the writer penned a vicious unauthorized biography of his former boss. Other writers remained loyal to their former benefactor, such as Larry Gelbart, Sherwood Schwartz, and Melville Shavelson.

His best in some time

[BruceCorneil · 8/10 · 23 January 2017]

Bob Hope is a stressed out New York TV host. His doctor orders him to take a vacation so he heads off to his ranch in Arizona for a couple of weeks. But ,instead of getting away from it all, he ends up being accused of a murder that takes place during his stay in the desert.

The comedy is broad, farcical and loose much like a sketch on one of Hope's TV specials. As usual, Bob's in a jam and firing off a succession of wisecracks helps him to cope with a sticky situation.

Forrest Tucker and Ralph Bellamy play the bad guys in their respective roles as a con on the run and an evil land baron who's trying to frame the twitchy TV star. Keenan Wynne, as the cigar - chomping sheriff who has to find the real murderer, seems to have based his characterization on Yosemite Sam (with great success !)

This is a free - wheeling '70s movie and it's better than most of the pictures that Hope made near the end . In fact, as it turned out,this was to be his last, major big screen feature and , happily, it also proved to be his best in some time.

Sluggish caper

[shakercoola · 4/10 · 23 June 2022]

An American comedy adventure; A story about a talk show host who is sent on a vacation to Arizona on doctor's orders and has to solve a series of murders in which he is prime suspect after he stumbles upon a conspiracy to defraud a local Native American group of part of its reservation. This film plays as a farce as well as a comedy. Bob Hope gives an entertainingly drole performance with his mousetrap one-liners but he is too old for the character he plays and some of the comedy is self-referential which misfires for a main feature film. The main problem is the screenplay which drags and is too nonsensical in between Hope's attempts to make it work.

One of the Greatest Bad Flicks Ever

[curtis-8 · 10/10 · 7 June 2005]

In "Cancel My Reservation" Bob Hope plays a talk show host named Dan Bartlett who, on doctor's orders, travels to Arizona to take a break from the hustle and bustle of showbusiness--and of course finds himself almost immediately accused of murder!

Hilarity ensues when Bartlett's wife Sheila (Eva Marie Saint), who is also the new co-host he suspects is trying to muscle him out of his own show, shows up unannounced at her husband's vacation cabin and finds the clueless old dog has company--an unbelievably gorgeous hippiechick named Crazy (a very young, very hot Anne Archer) and a dead Indian girl.

Eventually Sheila and Crazy join forces to save Dan from the clutches of the town sheriff (Keenan Wynn), who is determined to see the TV star hang. And Crazy's suspiciously rich and evil-looking Dad (Ralph Bellamy) doesn't seem all that trustworthy either (wink).

Directed by veteran TV hack Paul Bogart (All in the Family) "Cancel My Reservation" has to be Bob Hope's all around worst movie--and yet it is extremely, mysteriously, watchable. One event follows the next with such an easy, non-jarring rhythm, that you are just carried along like a twig in a sewer overflow pipe. Not one of the jokes Hope is constantly cracking during the proceedings is even remotely funny. But even if there were any funny lines in the script, chances are you wouldn't be able to tell from the movie because Hope is sleepwalking through the whole thing. He shows even less energy in this flick than he did during the days when his performing career had dwindled down to a few walk-on appearances on the David Letterman Show. I mean, I gotta tell ya, watching this film makes you wonder why it took another quarter of a century for the rumor to get around that the man was dead.

"Cancel" does have a few charms I can put my finger on, however. For one, it has that hilarious desperately-trying-to-be-hip vibe that you find in so many Hollywood movies from the "hippie" era: men wearing women's wigs when playing Indians or flower children, incredibly lame "wacka-wacka" rock music during the chase scenes, references to Twiggy, and the like. Secondly, the actual story, which was based on a novel by Louis Lamour of all people, is really not too bad. It's kind of like a Scooby Doo episode for adults. Lastly, we have a 24-year old Anne Archer, in her film debut. All I can say about her performance is: Oh my god. Oh my god. OH MY GOD!! Damnity damnity damn damn DAYUM--that's one good-lookin' babe! Ahooooooo! AAAhhooooooooo!! Ruff! Ruff!!

******************

CHOICE DIALOG:

Bob, groping around in the dark, unexpectedly finds a naked Anne Archer in his bed:

ANNE: Careful Pardner! You don't have your brand on that yet!

BOB: You're alive!

ANNE (pulling a gun): Only one of us is gonna be if you make another move!

BOB: Who are you?

ANNE: That's MY question, stranger!

BOB: I asked you first.

ANNE: But I got the gun!

BOB: Don't you know it's against the law to carry a concealed weapon?

ANNE: I'm not wearing anything to conceal it in.

BOB: Well, skip the technicalities-you're in my bed!

ANNE (exuding sultry hipness): Heeeeyy, you must be the daddy bear of this cave!

BOB: I'm Dan Bartlett-and I'm not as bare as you are!

ANNE: Oh, the TV pitchman. I thought you were here to do a little rustlin'!

BOB: I'm too tired for that kind of rustlin', so whoever you are will you clear out so I can get some sleep!!!

***************************

HA!! Oh my god, I may never stop laughing! No…HA…seriously!! Oh man, I'm dying here! Let me catch my breath, please!! Oh Christ its too funny! Ahhhhh……aaaaa…aaaa….uhm.

Oh, I'm sorry. I have the Simpson's on the TV while I'm writing this, and Homer just said "doh" again. Damn, that's funny stuff.

Anyway, back to Bob Hope in "Cancel My Reservation"….

You know, on second thought...screw it. I'm done.