Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

I, too, saw this movie as a kid, together with all the other Verne-type adventures from "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" and "Time Machine" to "The Magic Sword" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and "Lost World." These movies and and science-fiction books fired my imagination and made being a kid so much fun. My kids saw "Five Weeks in a Balloon" one summer when we drove cross-country in our new van, outfitted with a TV with a built-in VCR you could plug into the cigarette lighter. They loved it, and can still sing the theme song today at ages 24 and 21. So, while this movie may in fact be for "the kid trade," it's a safe bet it'll do more for their imagination than any "Dark Knight" or "Iron Man" today.

I well remember seeing Five Weeks In A Balloon in theaters as a lad and after Fabian made his appearance peeking through the cabin door of the balloon, the squeals from his teenage fans pretty much drowned out the soundtrack the rest of the film. When I got to see it later on television I found it to be an unassuming film, a nice adaption of Jules Verne's story, but one strictly for the kid trade.It seems a pity to waste the literate voices of Cedric Hardwicke and Richard Haydn and Herbert Marshall on screaming teenyboppers. Not to mention the comic talents of Red Buttons. Still that's what happened because the audience this film drew was for that pompadoured kid from Philadelphia.The United Kingdom has always prided itself on the fact that it was the first of western nations to outlaw the slave trade. So couched in those terms, its imperial ambitions in Africa seem almost noble in Five Weeks In A Balloon. Cedric Hardwicke is a balloonist who's invented an early form of gas propulsion with which his assistant Fabian helps him. He's planning to do some exploring of East Africa in and around Zanzibar. But Her Majesty in the form of Prime Minister Herbert Marshall calls on Hardwicke to undertake a 4000 mile journey across Africa to get to the Upper Volta to beat a gang of slave traders of an unknown nation and plant the flag for good old Britain.Making the trip with them are Richard Haydn representing the Crown and Red Buttons as a neutral American observer and reporter. Buttons is a walking train wreck as he gets them in one scrape after another. Red does redeem himself in the end however. Along the way this merry bunch picks up two women rescued from the clutches of slavery, Barbaras Luna and Eden and a slave-trader played by Peter Lorre. Lorre has the best lines in the whole film, he actually manages to see 'kismet, we are doomed' a few times without cracking up.Richard Haydn is usually a very funny guy, but in this film he's down right annoying. Playing his usual fussbudget character, you kind of wonder is this the type of man who helped put together an Empire upon which the sun never set.Five Weeks In A Balloon is a nice film, but sad to say this cinema version of Jules Verne is strictly for the juveniles or for those who have a thing for Fabian.

Jules Verne wrote the book that this film is based on in 1863, when Africa was not yet fully explored, the British Empire sought to rule the world, and "White Man's Burden" was the accepted philosophy of the age. That such a film could be made in 1962 and contain so many stupid, ugly stereotypes shows you how far the movie industry still had to go.This film has it all- the obviously white (but dark haired and tanned) native girl who speaks perfectly good, though halting, English ("Me Makia. Who You?"), the "Arabs" waving Scimitars and mistaking the white explorers for "Gods" because they come out of the sky in their amazing, technologically advanced balloon, the white blonde (Barbara Eden) who must be rescued from being ravaged by the drooling Muslim traders, the "Sultans" who look like they stepped right out of Alladin, with their pointy slippers and jeweled turbans and all-white harems, the Africans with painted bodies, feathers in their hair and necklaces of bones around their necks, waving spears and shouting gibberish....I could go on and on.Should I even bother to mention the bizarre travel route taken by explorers who are in a hurry to get to a specific place- flying across central Africa from East to West, then finding themselves in the Sub-Saharan grasslands, then in a Saharan sandstorm, then back over the jungle? So they are in a race against time, but they take the All-Chiche' route anyway?? I recommend this film to any film history teacher who wants to discuss racism in Hollywood. If you decide to show it to your children, at least make it an educational experience- pause from time to time to discuss the use of revolting stereotypes and why it's demeaning, to both the people being stereotyped and the viewers.

The title song assures us that, if you fly in a balloon, nothing is impossible. "I'm taller than an elephant and twice as powerful, too." From the first minute you know, "5 Weeks in a Balloon" will be fun with a capital F. Sure, it's easy to analyze this movie and come to the conclusion it's childish and full of clichés. But my point is, grown-ups rarely manage to make movies that really show the world as it is in the imagination of a 10 year old - an admirable quality. While the real Africa is struck by war, starvation and disease, this is the fantasy Africa where rogues were colorful costumes for good looks and the heroes will have a break in the middle of the wilderness, not worrying about the lions around, to sing a song before they go on - because they know, in a dream no-one can actually be harmed. "5 Weeks in a Balloon" may not be Irwin Allen's best movie, but I still like it as much as I did when I watched it for the first time, because only movie theater entertainment at its best can take us away from the real world for an hour and a half to forget all our worries. Can't be grateful enough for that sometimes!