Honeymoon in Bali (1939)

Smoking hot cast list, they are sadly under-used. LOVE helen broderick. so fun. she got all the good, wisecracker lines in films. Monty Wooley is in it for five seconds, and that's an uncredited role. And of course, our star, a young thirty year old Fred MacMurrary. The script has weird timing. Lots of talking. Has the feel of a film based on a play. The first five minutes is a window washer gag, that doesn't really have anything to do with the story. The script kind of goes all over the place. Some fun, clever lines. Boy (MacMurray) finally meets girl (Madeleine Carroll), and spends the middle part of the film trying to find her again. Drama, intrigue. Directed by Edward Griffith. Griffith's specialty was making films about fun, exotic, far-away lands, which were probably really filmed in California, sometimes the Bahamas. There's a five minute bit where MacMurray plays piano and "sings" in a foreign language; pretty painful. Then Allen Jones sings for a couple minutes, also pretty painful, serious stuff. Should have left the musical numbers out. Such great actors in here... Script needed jazzing up. Fun to watch just for the actors in it. Story ain't no big thang.

Can't you see them on Bali when the war in the Pacific heats up? Does our hero join the US military and leave, or stay on Bali to help in the defense? Do his wife and little girl flee successfully or get captured? There would be the big reunion scene where he is injured but still the same fellow no matter what the war has done to him externally. I can hardly watch a Pacific island movie in that era without picturing gunships and islands soon to be overrun by soldiers.I liked the little girl. Her not being able to sing the ditty right was a cute answer to Shirley Temple's extreme acumen. But kids in movies are a matter of taste.The part about a woman without a husband and child being like someone missing an arm was grim and insulting to her friend who was single and childless. What the priest and the window washer said, though, was quite good. In the Forties the message would be much more in favor of strong independent women, but during the war, movies didn't want to discourage Rosie the Riveter from performing her duties.On the whole I'd have to say some of it was good, some awful, and all of it predictable. The French woman and the window washer were the only characters I found interesting. What a plot device! Laying the movie out in the first few minutes with a psychic reading. Talk about a spoiler! And the little girl was just sort of thrown into the storyline without any preparation or foundation for her being there except as a way to show that a real woman is emotional and motherly. Of course women and men actually come in many variations. I think the movie tried to engage in a discussion of male and female roles in society and failed miserably because it was the same old story of a bossy repressed woman dominated by a strong unrepressed man who takes her from her career and turns her into a wife and mother, which is her happy ending. It makes me long for His Gal Friday, out the next year in 1940.

Back in the days of the New Deal, America's effort to deal with the Depression, the movies were a way of escaping your problems. Films like Honeymoon in Bali were just what people wanted to see. The women in the audience certainly envied Madeleine Carroll who got to go to Bali in pursuit of Fred MacMurray.A similar film had been done the year before, Joy of Living, with Irene Dunne leaving New York and the theater to sail off to the South Seas with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. A nice group of songs by Jerome Kern were also in the score for Irene to sing.Honeymoon in Bali also had some real nice singing in the person of Allan Jones. He was part of a trade with Universal studios who got the services of Bing Crosby for two of their films. Jones is only in support here, he's a rival of MacMurray for Dunne. He plays a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera and gets to sing O Paradiso from L'Africana by Meyerbeer. He also sings Happy Birthday with singing telegraph boy Bennie Bartlett.This film is typical work for Fred MacMurray, the light leading man in many Paramount comedies. He was more often teamed with Carole Lombard during this period, but Madeleine Carroll was every bit the able substitute for Lombard. I do get the feeling that this film may have originally been written with Lombard in mind. There's also a very droll performance by Akim Tamiroff as the wise and philosophical window washer.Honeymoon in Bali is a very nice escapist type film that still holds up well today. What woman wouldn't want to spend their lives in Bali away from the stress of civilization with Fred MacMurray.

I have just finished watching the DVD Version of "Honeymoon In Bali" and must say that it is really good. The DVD Version was released by Passion Productions. Fred MacMurray and Madeleine Carroll, was just wonderful. anyone wishing a little romance in their lives should really enjoy this movie.