Great Film overall

Boring

Beautiful, moving film.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

After a break of ten years, this was to be the last entry into the long -running and extremely popular cycle of "Road" movies. Hope and Crosby were in their late fifties by the time this one came along and they were obviously due to retire from their familiar, high energy roles as roustabout con men / adventurers. But, even though they may have been slowing down just a touch, the generally snappy pace and witty banter of earlier outings remained intact.This quirky offering was made in England on a seemingly low budget. Shot in black and white, it must have been a visual disappointment for audiences after the color escapades of its immediate predecessor - 1952's "Road to Bali". As usual, there's a couple of good songs, the best of which, "Team Work", opens the picture.The supporting cast is excellent and the cameo appearances by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin just before the curtain falls was a nice touch.Despite it's somewhat bargain basement look, it still manages to provide a fun finale to the series

An amiable excursion! Admittedly, Bing has lost a bit of the old bounce, but Hope is as enthusiastically ingenuous as ever. The team's old Road companion, Dorothy Lamour, has an ten-minute scene at the climax and proves that she can still hold an audience even though she hasn't been on the big screen since the 1952 Road to Bali. This time, however, the main femme role is taken by Joan Collins who certainly looks very alluring. On the other hand, her ultra-cultured voice tends to get a bit monotonous. It's also unfortunate that the screenplay has her spending the last twenty minutes of the movie in an unattractive Chinese coolie outfit. As we might expect, the screenplay employs some good gags and amusing situations – though some of the scenes could stand a bit of trimming, particularly a long encounter between Hope and Dave King (who plays a Chinese restaurant proprietor). Norman Panama's direction tends to be loose rather than tight, flaccid rather than taut. And the same remarks could be applied to the script. Sure, the plot is a ludicrous enough peg on which to hang various "in" jokes, guest star spots and the musical numbers, plus a bit of gentle ribbing. Unfortunately, at times, some actors choose to play the game perfectly straight – particularly Collins, Morley and Gotell – instead of tongue-in-cheek. Fortunately, other credits are up to par and the movie has been realized on a fair- sized budget, including even a tiny bit of location filming in Hong Kong.

'The Road To Singapore' ( 1940 ) starred Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. It was a winning team - Hope provided the gags, Crosby the singing, and Lamour the glamour. Five more pictures in similar vein followed. With 'The Road To Bali' ( 1952 ), it looked like the end for the musical comedy series, but a decade later it returned for an encore, which was filmed in England despite the title!'Hong Kong' has Bob and Bing as 'Chester Babcock' and 'Harry Turner', con men trying to sell a flying device that looks like the one Woody Allen used to escape security guards in 'Sleeper' ( 1973 ). During a demonstration, Chester loses his memory. Harry takes him first to an Indian doctor ( an uncredited Peter Sellers reprising his 'Milionairess' role in all but name ) and then to a Tibetan monastery. Chester is cured but then accidentally memorises a formula for space navigation, and agents of a mysterious organisation known as 'The Third Echelon' are after both of them. Luckily, one such agent is 'Diane' ( Joan Collins )...When I first saw this on television many moons ago, I assumed that Hope and Crosby were spoofing 'James Bond'. The S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like 'The Third Echelon' hides out in an underground lair ( beneath sea level ) accessible through a secret entrance, employs agents in black, roll-neck jumpers ( worn by at least every spy at some point in the '60's ) and is led by a 'Blofeld'-like megalomaniac ( Robert Morley ). Their plan for world domination involves space rockets ( also the premise of 'Dr.No', the first Bond movie ). I was surprised to learn that 'Hong Kong' actually came out before 007's debut, meaning that Norman Panama and Melvin Frank beat all those spy spoofs to the punch by a few years. The titles were designed by Maurice Binder, by the way!Dorothy Lamour is unfairly relegated to a small role ( she's on screen for no more than five minutes ) while the main female role is given to Joan Collins, despite her having virtually no flair for comedy. Still it was good to see 'Dottie' again with the boys.The gags come thick and fast. One is 'borrowed' from Chaplin's 'Modern Times' - Bob and Bing are flying around in a space capsule and a machine feeds them bananas and milk ( the ship was originally intended to house monkeys ). The Hong Kong setting allows for racial stereotyping which probably would not be allowed now, but the most interesting scene is Chester and Harry's encounter with Sellers. It is the old guard of comedy handing over the baton to the new. Allegedly they tried to delete it as they felt the ex-Goon to be upstaging them.Loads of British faces on view - Dave King ( as a Chinese restaurant owner ), Roger Delgado ( later to play 'The Master' in 'Dr.Who' ), Walter Gotell ( 'General Gogol' of the Bond movies ), Felix Aylmer, and a fleeting appearance from David Niven! The ending has our heroes stranded on an alien planet, where they bump into Rat Packers Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin! Not one of the best 'Road' films by a long chalk, but Bob and Bing are always watchable. Too old? Well, they were in their sixties, but it would only have been a problem if they had been playing young men. They weren't.In 1977, Bob and Bing planned to make 'The Road To The Fountain Of Youth' but the latter's death made the project impossible. For better or worse, 'Hong Kong' was the end of the pair's long journey.

There are no bad ROAD movies, and I do not except this one from that statement. As someone once said of the Marx Brothers film AT THE CIRCUS (and I paraphrase) in the career of any other comedy team this picture would be considered a classic. It not only holds its own with the rest of the series but I actually prefer it to ROAD TO RIO, which (while still adhering to the Road Rule stated above) always seemed like the weakest of the series to me. It's funny the reasons some other posters have given for not liking the film: It looks like it was made in the Sixties (it was), the stars looks like they're nearing their sixties (they were, and so what?), it's not as funny as the others in the series (in any given horse race one horse will come in last, but he still had to be pretty damn good to get into the race in the first place). And nobody seems to much like Joan Collins. Well, she was gorgeous and a competent enough actress and in a movie like this who cares anyway? It's Bob and Bing's movie and despite what anyone says they prove they've still got the goods and deliver them with ease. I say quit carping and enjoy.