The Road to Ruin

By J.C.

CANCEL MY RESERVATION Directed by PAUL BOGART Screenplay by ARTHUR MARX and ROBERT FISHER

On this outing, Bob Hope unpacks a parcel of sleazy, wheezy gags about Bing Crosby, Martha Mitchell, New York City, Women's Liberation, wom en's undergarments and Georgie Jessel. For a little change of pace, he tosses off a Billy Graham joke.

Hope makes a pass at playing a TV talk-show host whose wife (Eva Marie Saint) came out to take a bow one evening and hasn't left the stage since. Miffed at the state of his marriage generally, and particularly huffy about competition from his spouse, Hope wings off to his Arizona ranch, where he becomes mixed up in the mur der of an Indian girl, portrayed by a Vegas chorine type caked in Man Tan.

Reservation strikes a blow for unliberated womanhood. Eva Marie is converted from "doing her own thing" to housewifedom and motherhood after some heavy petting with Hope, who manages to extricate them both from imprisonment in a cave. To do this, he shoots a signal out of a crack in the rocks with a homemade bow crafted from a handy branch and Eva Marie's leopard-skin brassiere. "I'm certainly glad I didn't burn my bra," coos Eva Marie. This sort of sniggering sitcom stuff belongs more prop erly on television, the celluloid burial ground for which Cancel My Reservation is quickly destined.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.