CommentsXp Best movie ever!

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

SteinMo What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

HomeyTao For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

weezeralfalfa The Road Series, starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, peaked during the war years. Thereafter, only a few more were made, at multi-year intervals. This one, released in -52, followed "The Road to Rio" released in '47. The Bali film was the only one filmed in Technicolor instead of B&W. Like "The Road to Singapore", the story supposedly mostly takes place on an Indonesian island. And like that film, they never make it to their titled destination. Dorothy had starred in in several other films supposedly sited in the South Seas or other exotic locations, even though she didn't look exotic.As usual, it features a couple of ne'er-do-well drifters, who have been surviving by occasional gigs in bands playing trumpet or clarinet, or by putting on vaudeville-like shows. They have to exit Melbourne, Aus. quickly to escape a couple of angry fathers and their daughters. They love women, but not for keeps. Unfortunately, they are also hounded on the train to Darwin, on the opposite side of Australia, so have to quickly exit the train. Some time later, they arrive in Darwin sporting long beards, which quickly vanish. They get a job diving for sunken treasure near the Indonesian island of Batu, where they meet Princess Lala(Dorothy Lamour), who warns them this is a suicidal venture, as the last 4 applicants disappeared into the ocean. Nonetheless, Hope: the diver, finds the lost treasure and barely survives a wresting match with a giant squid. "Grab the loot and Scoot" says Bing. But their employer wants to hog all they jewels, even tough, they rightfully belong to Princess Lala. The squid takes care of him, and the 3 motor on toward Bali. But, their trip is cut short when they hit a reef, sinking their boat. They survive to find themselves on a small island, where there are tigers, elephants and rust-colored gorillas, along with many natives and their chief and an Indian King: Ramayana, who demands that Princess Lala marry him, though he already has several wives. But she loves Bing and Hope, not the king. The rest of the film deals mainly with the question of whom the princess will marry.Of course, there are various geographical or cultural absurdities. There is a Batu group of small Indonesian Islands, but its located off the west coast of Sumatra: hardly on the way to Bali, which is the only Indonesian island with a dominant Hindu cultural heritage. The very impressive gold headpieces sometimes worn by some of the dancers or by the princess, are characteristic of Thailand, but not of Balinese nor Indian Hindus. Tigers and elephants occur in some Indonesian locations, but not likely on a small island. Gorillas, of course are far from their native habitat. The rusty-colored beasts look like a cross between orangutans and gorillas. The kids, especially, will be impressed by the monstrous-looking headpieces worn by Bing , Bob and the officials, at times.Note" Jane Russell, who appears for a moment at the end, had costarred with Hope in "The Paleface" and "The Son of Paleface".I'm somewhat surprised the censors didn't nix the supposed marriage of Bing to Hope.

BA_Harrison The 'Road' movies are the kind of films that used to be programmed on British TV in the late '70s/early '80s on a (usually rainy) Sunday afternoon, when there was little else to do except play board games. I watched them when I was young and remember finding them relatively amusing at the time—well, more fun than a game of Mousetrap (all that setting up the plastic pieces for it not to work!).Having just watched Road To Bali, my first Road trip since I was a kid, I'm wondering what the hell I was thinking: the film is a horribly antiquated comedy with gags well past their sell-by-date and dull song and dance routines. The plot is all over the place, but mainly consists of our two happy-go-lucky heroes, George Cochran (Bing Crosby) and Harold Gridley (Bob Hope) arguing about who is going to marry beautiful Princess Lala (Dorothy Lamour), who they meet after applying for jobs as deep sea divers, their mission to retrieve a long sunken treasure guarded by a massive squid.The vaudevillian jokes (scripted and ad-libbed), many of which were topical at the time, come thick and fast, but unless you're an octogenarian (and still blessed with your hearing and your marbles), I doubt very much if you'll find very many of them funny because you simply won't 'get' them (I'm fast approaching fifty and many of the quips sailed way over my head). Fortunately, the presence of the gorgeous Dorothy Lamour helps matters a lot, and there are a couple of fun, silly moments featuring the giant squid and an amorous gorilla, but with such dreadful gags and unmemorable songs, the hour and a half really felt like a lot longer.***According to other comments here on IMDb, 'Bali' is one of the weaker Road movies. If I ever decide to take another trip down memory lane with Bing and Bob, I sure hope they're right.***

Uriah43 This movie begins in Melbourne, Australia with two singers named "George Cochran" (Bing Crosby) and "Harold Gridley" (Bob Hope) entertaining the crowd with a song and dance routine. While they're performing they notice the family of a woman they had each asked to marry on the right of the stage. Minutes later they notice the same thing on the left of the stage. Since neither want to become involved in a shotgun wedding they make a dash for it and grab the first train out. Not long afterward, they wind up in a small town and take the only job that seems available—diving for treasure off an island not too far from Bali, Indonesia. While on this island they meet a beautiful princess named "Lala MacTavish" (Dorothy LaMour) who warns George about the hazards associated with the particular dive that Harold has been talked into doing. But rather than tell his partner George allows him to proceed right into the arms of a giant squid. One thing leads to another and soon all three of them find themselves shipwrecked on an island with a native king who wants Princess Lala all to himself and her two companions dead. Now, up until this point the movie was moving along quite nicely but it's here that the wheels begin to fall off due in large part to jokes that fell flat and a story-line which wasn't that amusing. It was almost as if the script ended half-way through the film and Bob Hope was left to ad-lib from there to the end. In any case, this was a pretty weak entry in the "Road Series" and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Robert J. Maxwell If you've never seen one of the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope "Road" pictures, then you shouldn't miss this one. Of course, if you've managed to miss all the others, it means either that you don't like movies or that you're young -- very young.There's nothing wrong with being young, aside from the fact that you're dominated by the sea of hormones your internal organs swim in, you're beset by curious and unbidden throbs, and that you go around uttering hoarse, goaty cries. It's just that, in watching this funny comedy, you're likely to miss some of the topical jokes.And, let's face facts, 1952, when this movie was released, is not 1941, when the first "Road" picture appeared, "The Road to Singapore," which served as a kind of plot-heavy notochord that provided the spine for the string of highly amusing sequels that appeared over the next five or six years -- roads to Zanzibar, Morroco, Rio and Utopia.By 1952, the formula had about played itself out. The two leads are as full of zest and spontaneity as always, they don't look much older, Dorothy Lamour is as pleasant a presence as ever, and the musical numbers are as catchy as usual, written by the same team, but the gags are repetitive and less fresh.It's worth catching, especially, as I say, if you're new to the genre. You may skip the geriatric antics of "The Road to Hong Kong."