The Road to Morocco (1942)

Why it's here:
To see the comedy team of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in one of their famous "road" pictures.

Specs:
Hour and a half, black and white. This is one of seven films featuring the same basic gag of our leads "On the Road..." to somewhere.

Our family's average rating on a scale of 1-10:
8.5

More about the film and our reaction to it:
This is what we would nowadays call a 'buddy picture', featuring two wise cracking smart-alecs cruising around the countryside, trading insults, laughing and trying not to get killed. (In this case, there's singing too). The most similar modern film I can think of is Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.

The cool thing about getting your buddy flick fix in the classic era, is that you get all the humor of the buddy picture without all the raunchy stuff they put in them these days.  This film is not just hilarious, but very family friendly too. ...with the one caveat that it is not particularly socially sensitive. Cultural stereotypes abound, and there is a bit where mental retardation is made fun of. I know that's not cool, and we had a nice conversation with the kids about how the standards for what is OK to make fun of have changed over time, but still...  These elements did not feel offensive, because the movie is so light-hearted and happy go lucky, and because our main characters spend just as much time skewering themselves as anyone else. It was clear that the whole movie was delightfully fun to make.

The movie is so packed with snappy dialogue and one-liners that we "had" to watch it twice just to hear everything :)  The chemistry between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby is tremendous. We talked about how Crosby was predominately known as a singer (who was also funny) and Hope was predominately a comedian (who also sang). Hope has extraordinary comic timing. If you haven't seen him lately, or haven't seen him in his prime, then you need to watch this film.

And I don't want to leave out Dorothy Lamour who costarred in all the "road" pictures with the guys -- and is talented, funny and charming.

Iconic Shot: