When I saw the title of the fourth installment of the Road to . . . series, Road to Utopia (1945), it gave this practicing Catholic pause.  “Utopia” is a loaded word, historically and spiritually.  It is something that everyone wants, which is why it has often been compared to Heaven.  It is also a place people have tried to create on Earth, most often with disastrous results.  Others have seen it in terms of the kind of society where everyone is equal, but more often it is focused on an individual having all the wealth they will ever need.  The former is more akin to the Christian ideal, though that, too, is fraught with controversy.  Who gets to determine what makes everyone equal?  The events of today’s film have nothing to do with those lofty principles.  Instead, you have the usual antics of the series’ stalwarts doing whatever they can to make it rich, and in that you have what the movie tells you is utopia.

Because Road to Utopia is the fourth of these pictures, they wanted to start with something different.  We get to see a narrator (Robert Benchley) explain to a classroom the odd comedy we are about to watch.  I am not sure what is so strange about it, but they get an “A” for effort.  At any rate, he introduces us to Chester (Bob Hope) and Sal Hooton (Dorothy Lamour), an old married couple living out their remaining years in a luxurious mansion.  Before Sal can convince Chester to get to bed, they receive a visitor at the door.  It is Duke Johnson (Bing Crosby), Chester’s old pal/rival who he has not seen in forty years ago.  Once the narrator confirms for us that we are about to have a flashback, we are taken to the scene of a crime in San Francisco around 1900.  Sal Van Hoyden, her maiden name, enters a room where her father has just been shot by the infamous outlaw pair McGurk (Nestor Paiva) and Sperry (Robert Barrat).  Not only have they committed murder, but they have stolen a map to an Alaskan gold mine.  With dad’s last breath, he tells Sal to travel north to Skagway, the gateway to the Klondike, where his old friend, Ace Larson (Douglass Dimbrille), will render assistance.  Meanwhile, the killers duck into a theater where Chester and Duke are giving a vaudeville performance.  While their first number is song and dance, the second is a fake magic show that involves the pair fleecing the audience of their money.  The scam is uncovered, though, when the police chase McGurk and Sperry onto the stage and into the back of the theater.  This means Chester and Duke must make their own escape, with the cash, before they are pounced upon by an angry mob.  Once at their hotel counting their winnings, Chester wants to return to New York City.  Duke, reading the future with a deck of playing cards, which is not a Godly thing to do, advocates that they head for Alaska.  Eventually, they agree to part, with Chester taking most of their dollars as he feels he is owed.  Before he can board his ship, Duke picks his friend’s pocket.  They are waving goodbye to each other when Chester sees Duke counting the bills.  Feeling cheated, Chester debarks and gets onto the Alaska bound vessel, which shoves off before he is able to retrieve the money.  Not that it matters much because once they are in their stateroom, Chester mistakes a porthole for a safe and throws all the cash into the sea.  Once more penniless, they must now work as part of the crew to pay off their passage.  Doing so brings them into contact with McGurk and Sperry.  As the ship is about to dock at Skagway, Chester and Duke are cleaning out a berth when they find the parchment with directions to the lode.  Of course, McGurk and Sperry return just as Chester and Duke figure out what they have found.  Somehow, our two so-called heroes are able to overpower the criminals and basically steal their identity.  This proves handy not only in getting off the boat, but instilling fear into the locals based on McGurk and Sperry’s reputation.  Chester and McGurk head for Ace Larson’s saloon, where Sal has been made into a musical performer.  However, they have been waiting for McGurk and Sperry’s arrival, and Sal uses her set to lure the men individually into her room.  With her womanly wiles, she gets them to reveal the existence of the map.  Yet, because they have divided it in two between them, Sal only gets Duke’s half.  With this, Ace takes it, showing his duplicity, and leaves for his base of operations to the north.  However, it is only when he has gotten to his next destination does he realize that the paper is incomplete.  Meanwhile, Chester and Duke, and Sal separately, each take off in the same direction.  So, too, do McGurk and Sperry.  Ace’s confidant, Kate (Hillary Brooke), is sent back to intercept Chester and Duke, who they still believe to be McGurk and Sperry.  They find her half buried in the snow, which also happens to be near a cabin.  Fortuitously, they are joined by Sal in the same moment.  In the middle of the night, despite Sal learning Chester and Duke’s true identities, she feels compelled to charm Chester’s portion of the map off him.  She and Kate then slip away in the middle of the night after a comedic snuggle with bears.  The chase is once more on, with McGurk and Sperry joining the fray.  The murderers meet their end in an avalanche, while Sal manages to get the whole map and make off with Chester and Duke.  Duke is separated from then, though, by the opening up of a crevasse.  This brings us back to modern times as Duke explains that he fought his way free.  The final shot is off the Hooton’s son, who is the mirror image of a young Duke.

The less said about this last moment in Road to Utopia the better, though Chester does claim that junior is adopted.  If so, that is a blessing.  It is the age-old and sound argument of us Pro Life supporters that the children of unwanted pregnancies can be adopted.  Yet, given the material contained therein, continuing a discussion about abortion in this context would not make much sense.  Further, in keeping with the theme of the franchise, our two main characters have few scruples about double crossing each other in the pursuit of money or women or both, usually both.  Still, this one does have Duke’s heroic act of sacrificing himself so that Chester and Sal can make it to the gold mine.  As Jesus reminds His Disciples in John 15:13, there is no greater thing one can do for a friend than to lay down your life for that person.  Of course, Duke does not die, but he at least seems willing to do so when he is last seen in the Klondike Mountains.  Then again, it does not appear that he had a choice.  After all, this is a comedy.  Finally, I am willing to bet that a person who divines the future by flips of playing cards does not think too much about the Spiritual rewards of noble behavior.  Hence, once again we are left with a pair of cads whose unseemly treatment of one another is played for laughs.  At the same time, it makes me wonder if you can have a funny movie with characters who are not terrible people in some fashion.  Believe it or not, God has a sense of humor.  Those of us who are followers of Christ know this to be true.  The stereotype of such people is that they are serious all the time, which comes from a divergence in what is and is not sacred.  In those things, too, there can be some levity.  If you care to look on social media, for example, you can find entire communities of Catholic memes.  The point is that we can be funny without being offensive.

It is also not fair to call Road to Utopia offensive.  It is also not as culturally or racially insensitive as its predecessors, so it has that going for it.  My only wish is that the main characters were better people, particularly amongst two supposed friends.  Otherwise, this has been my favorite of the series to this point.  Indeed, you can watch this one and forget about its predecessors without any worry of it not making sense, despite the narrator’s warning.