"The Princess and the Pirate" was made about midway between the series of Road movies Bob Hope did for Paramount. For this one he was on loan to Sam Goldwyn, and I'm sure the noted director got his money's worth. Hope is in fine form here, with a lot of his lines feeling like they were ad-libbed for each humorous situation. As with virtually every pirate movie, comedy or not, a treasure map is at the center of the story, but by the end of the picture that doesn't really mean much. Sharing screen time with beautiful Virginia Mayo, frustrated actor Sylvester the Great (Hope) gets into and out of a number of scrapes while dodging the likes of villainous pirate captain The Hook (Victor McLaglen), and governor of Casarouge, the flamboyant and colorful La Roche (Walter Slezak). You can tell Hope is having a fun time, and actress Mayo reciprocates by smiling in agreement with every line of his humorous dialog. Hope even manages to throw in a couple zingers about his Road partner Bing Crosby, who shows up at the finale to have the last laugh. Of the nearly thirty Bob Hope films I've seen, this one compares favorably with IMDb viewers, ranking in ninth place at the time of this writing, and does even better in the pirate movie category, ahead even of a couple of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Personally, I don't think that's warranted, though I doubt many Johnny Depp fans even know who Bob Hope is. Either way, this is a fun flick, perhaps paving the way for another comedy team to sail into pirate waters when in 1952, "Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd".
Review of The Princess and the Pirate
The Princess and the Pirate
(1944)
"Mainmast? I wouldn't know the mainmast if it fell on me."
4 September 2023
Warning: Spoilers