I hope you're not looking for Crosby and Hope

Among my recent purchases from Amazon was this four-film William Powell box set. Not having posted about any of the four movies in the set, I decided to start off by watching The Road to Singapore.

The movie starts off by informing us that Hugh Dawltry is some sort of a jerk, having had his house under a lien for non-payment of taxes, as well as getting expelled from his club in Khota, one of those British enclaves in Malaya of the sort where Somerset Maugham set The Letter. We learn all of this without actually seeing him in the opening scenes. He's actually in Ceylon, where he (played by Powell) meets Philippa (Doris Kenyon). She's getting ready to marry Dr. March (Louis Calhern), whom she had met when he was in medical school. Now he's living in Khota, so Philippa and Hugh are going to be taking the same boat to Khota.

Now, part of the reason Hugh is considered to be a jerk by the polite society of Khota is that he caused a scandal by wooing a married woman and leading her to get a divorce. Put two and two together, and you can guess where this movie is going. And it doesn't take all that long to get there either, since the movie is only 69 minutes. However, there's something to be said in Hugh's defense, which is that Philippa is going into things with her eyes open. It dawns on her fairly quickly that her husband has become more married to his job than to her; he's also a bit of a drip.

Complicating things is that Dr. March has a teenage sister Rene (Marian Marsh) living with him in Khota. She sees Dawltry, and she's immediately smitten with him. She's also willing to be quite forward about it, since this is a pre-Code Dr. March begins to figure out what's going on, and he is none too pleased; to be fair, this is the one thing you can't blame him for considering Hugh's reputation.

The Road to Singapore is a reasonably mid-level pre-code. There's nothing particularly wrong with it, but it also doesn't stand out like some of the other movies in the genre. Powell gives a professional performance, as does Calhern and the supporting cast.

If I were introducing people to pre-codes, I would pick some other movies. But for people who like them, I can certainly recommend The Road to Singapore.