Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

A lot of fun.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The ever self-effacing Bob Hope gets to rub noses with a baby elephant in this film, and it's a toss up who's the winner. The movie itself, probably depending on your mood and the time of day, is either another fun romp or just a plain dud. In a story line that's strung together with little rhyme or reason, Hope's character Matt Merriwether finds himself on an important government mission to retrieve a space capsule carrying moon samples deep in the heart of Africa. Or wherever the Ekele country of Makuta is.The film plods along rather non-sensically until all of a sudden Hope finds himself on a golf course with Arnold Palmer! They trade a few swings and one liners until it's time to move on, leaving one to wonder what might have just happened. What could have been a 'Road' movie is given some poignancy when Hope remarks about the questionable golf clubs he finds himself using - "Fellow by the name of Crosby left those here"."Call Me Bwana" will never be accused of being a great movie, or even one of Bob Hope's better films. But if you enjoy his brand of comedy you have your share of witty zingers and name dropping references to folks like Crosby and Sinatra along the way. Having Anita Ekberg and Edie Adams on hand make it just a bit easier to handle, even while the moon probe Merriwether's after seems to change size, shape and color throughout the picture.

One of Bob Hope's best--When he must become a member of the Tribe, it'll remind you a little bit of JOE VS THE VOLCANO--The chief was hilarious here, and Anita Ekberg, with the killer body and too much makeup, is a joy to watch also--Although its obvious that this was not actually filmed in Africa, it still has some stock footage of some African scenery.Unlike Bob's EIGHT ON THE LAM(a disaster), this film is fun and funny--A bit slow in parts, but if you're a Bob Hope fan, you'll like it.Another funny film of his is BOY DID I GET A WRONG NUMBER(1966) with Phyllis Diller, and THE PRIVATE NAVY OF SARGENT O'FARRELL

Wow...it's bad. A witless comedy that has Bob Hope, as a phony great white hunter, roped into finding a downed US space capsule in Africa. He's joined by smart spy Edie Adams and smart Russian spy Anita Ekberg. Hope has chemistry with neither lady. He bounces unfunny one-liner after unfunny one-liner off them (Ekberg appears to not be getting any of it) to no avail. A dismal comedy even among the very dismal comedies Hope made in the 1960s. Directed, unimaginatively, by Gordon Douglas and featuring a lot of rear screen projection and, for some inexplicable reason, a golf game between Hope and the young Arnold Palmer! The jerky editing, fast motion and goofy sound effects are for naught. Unfunny in-jokes (directed at Bing Crosby, JFK, Sinatra, etc) abound in this awful movie.

For years Bob Hope was one of cinema's most engaging presences, as classic comedies like "My Favorite Brunette/Blonde" and "The Princess And The Pirate" make clear even today. The lack of similar scripts in the 1960s didn't stop Bob from working, however, and the results were films like "Call Me Bwana" that diminished his legacy in a small but annoying way.As the politically incorrect title suggests, this is a safari-themed picture, with Bob playing Matthew Merriweather, a writer who palms off his uncle's memoirs of African adventure as his own while loafing around his Manhattan bachelor pad in a leopard-print bathrobe. Only everyone thinks he's on the level, which is a problem when a capsule crashes down in Africa and both the U.S. and the Soviets figure Merriweather's the only man to find it.The story is flimsy on many levels, but that's really not what's wrong here. Hope's not making "Out Of Africa," and the fact that the Frank Buck era of the Great White Explorer in Africa kind of ended by World War II is a minor nuisance, as is the fact its unlikely NASA couldn't find its own capsule with all the high-tech stuff they had even back then. No, you're supposed to enjoy this film as a vehicle for jokes. Only someone forgot the jokes.Hope just moseys through the film, his timing solid but firing blanks. "I'm here on a mission for the President of the United States," he tells a hostile-looking group of tribesmen. "You know, President Kennedy?" No reaction. "Bobby Kennedy? Teddy Kennedy? Jackie Kennedy? Caroline? Boy, these guys must be Republicans!"The attitude toward native Africans in this movie is not that bad. Hope's the buffoon, and for most of the film the black people around him are not targets as much as witnesses to his embarrassment. About the worst excess, other than the title, is when Hope makes a couple of porters carry his luggage on their heads, instead of toting them the normal way, because its more like what he's seen in "National Geographic."What's more off is the threadbare plot and a cast of supporting players who don't want to be there. Anita Ekberg and Edie Adams play rival spies in a sort of dull-eyed way. If it wasn't for Hope's joking about it so much you wouldn't know they were supposed to be sexy, but of course he does joke, and joke, and joke, about it. Lionel Jeffries is awkward in bad makeup and adds nothing as a nasty Soviet spy pretending to be a pious missionary who'd rather kill Merriweather than find the capsule. The best supporting performance is probably that of golfing legend Arnold Palmer, just for the way he enters the picture, a supremely silly but classic moment revisited in the Dan Ackroyd/Chevy Chase film "Spies Like Us." Unfortunately, the producers then have Palmer and Hope do ten minutes of random club-swinging in the middle of the picture, Hope making in-jokes about Bing while trying to cheat his way into looking respectable against Arnie. It's one thing to tack on a quick cameo; but the padding here really shows.Except there's nothing to pad. The whole movie is padded. Things happen, Hope makes a wisecrack, the scene changes, and everything we saw up to then is forgotten. At least a film set in Africa should be beautiful, but this is shot in such a cheap, offhanded manner it's almost distracting; its clear where the movie ends and the stock footage begins. The ending is particularly slipshod, which I couldn't spoil if I tried given I really have no idea what happened.Any Bob Hope comedy has the potential to be great, so when one fails to deliver as persistently as "Call Me Bwana," it really leaves one flat.