Hot Air

Five Weeks in a Balloon. "Sirrr," proclaims an intrepid Scotsman, "Ah prro-pose to fly in a balloon fourrr thousand mayles overrr unexplorred jungle!"

"Sir," avers a curmudgeonly colleague from Britain, "your plan is completelah lunatic. I know Africah. Neithah you nor your toy would lahst five minutes!"

The professor lasts 101 minutes, to be exact, and many of them will assuredly provide mercurochromatic relief for the screaming little monsters who habitually take a Saturday afternoon bloodbath. But while the children are goggling, their parents will be giggling--especially if they happen to have read the tall tale by Jules Verne from which the film is taken. Less than six decades after the author's death, his fantasies of the future read like parodies of the past, and Director Irwin Allen wisely plays for parody what he cannot turn to thrills. He laughs up his gasbag at the Vernerable tale. He pumps the soggy old Balloon so full of hot air that it finally gets off the ground.

To begin with, Director Allen pokes some sly fun at the balloon itself: a big, pink, candy-striped burp that floats above a unicorny dreamboat possibly borrowed from Disneyland. He also has a few snickers for the leathery old hams with which Balloon is ballasted: Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Peter Lorre, Red Buttons, Herbert Marshall, Billy Gilbert, Chester the Chimp--the ape apes them all and in the process manages slyly to suggest that they are all making monkeys of themselves. Gravely he lists the cinema cliches associated with African adventure: senile rented lions, brffsking British bwanas, bulbous Viennese sheiks, disdressed American beauties, big dumb tribesmen who look suspiciously like studio Indians retouched for the occasion. Most of all he relishes the silly things people say so earnestly in this sort of movie, and assembles a connoisseur's catalogue of clinkers:

"Infidels! You have dared to enter the Forbidden City of Timbuktu!"

"You will die at sunset."

"You, sir, are a villain!"

"If my life is to be sacrificed, I cannot think of a better cause."

"We must plant our flag first."

"Jettison the cargo!"

"Throw him overboard!"--"No, Donald, that's not our way."

"If we fail, heaven help the natives."

"It might be wise to do as they say, Professor."

"Somebody's going to pay for this!"

"Where you go, me go."

"Kismet! We are doomed!"

"Look! They're going over the falls!"

And they do, but not before somebody has said: "Great Scott!"

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