THE ROAD TO RIO: A 1948 REVIEW

Here is a review of the latest Road trip at the time - The Road To Rio. This was published in the NY Times on February 19, 1948...

With Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on the tramp again in "Road to Rio," recklessly scattering jokes and rescuing perennial girl friend Dorothy Lamour from dangerous hypnotic trances, there's fun to be had at the Paramount. Maybe this is not the funniest picture ever made; maybe it is not even quite as rewarding as some of those earlier journeys, but there are patches in this crazy quilt that are as good and, perhaps, even better than anything the boys have done before. 

They are traversing more of a rollercoaster highway than usual this time and so there are some tedious uphill pulls when the huffing and puffing is excessive and the results negligible. However, when they reach the top "Road to Rio" is irresistible.Hope reluctantly doing a highwire bicycle act and wrecking a carnival in the process, or being unceremoniously hung up as a side of ham in a ship's refrigerator, or blowing musical bubbles out of a trumpet in a Rio de Janeiro night club may sound silly in cold print, but it's the kind of stuff that gets laughs on the screen. 

And, naturally, Crosby, the smoothest straight man in the business today, is in there all the time getting situations started and feeding jokes to his pal when he doesn't actually steal the play by adding a snapper to a snapper.This mad caper is climaxed by a wild round of excitement at an ultra-lavish wedding party, when the boys bravely move in to rescue the dazed Miss Lamour from being duped into marriage by swindlers posing as friends. If this synopsis sounds sketchy, it's only because the story doesn't matter anyway. For the script merely serves as a means for getting a pair of impecunious musicians driven out of one state after another by irate husbands and boy friends until they are cornered, forced to stowaway on a Rio bound steamer and meet up with a beautiful senorita and her problems. All that matters really is that "Road to Rio" is fairly well loaded with laughs...