For the Fun-Venture of the Year!

— Original tagline

     Of all the many attempts at an Around the World in Eighty Days imitation, this one is undoubtedly the best. The fact that it still compares rather poorly to its Oscar-winning progenitor is no real criticism. Irwin Allen’s Five Weeks in a Balloon remains to this day an amusing (if totally featherweight) journey into the daft and delightful universe of Fireside Science Fiction.

This was producer Allen’s only true Fireside—though several of his other films (including his 1960 Lost World remake and his 1961 Leagues update Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) have the same general feel. And like most of Allen’s other SF films and TV shows, it’s best not to pay too close attention. The special effects and design elements are really rather good. And the cast, though not in the same league with that of Around the World, is still impressive, including a good many of the eccentric British character actors you’ve always wanted to see in a Jules Verne movie. Herbert Marshall makes a great “stiff-upper lip” English PM, and the great Henry Daniell is perfection itself in his usual dry, ironic villain role. But the plot is a bit loose around the edges, and not really meant to be taken seriously anyway. If there’s one valid criticism of Five Weeks, it’s the fact that the tone of the film is so very jokey that we never feel threatened enough to have anything like a real adventure. Around the World is a tad like this, too, of course, but there, I think, the jokes were more sophisticated—Noel Coward (who’s actually in Around the World) to this film’s Red Buttons. And it may be Red himself (who also had a cameo in the Mike Todd movie!) who keeps things from getting really airborne. His vain, bumbling lunkhead of a newspaperman comes off as a Jar-Jar Binks for the Jules Verne set…and has a similar effect on the film in general.

Even so, there’s a lot to like about Five Weeks; second tier it may be, but many individual aspects of it aren’t. The grainy, slightly distorted Cinemascope process was no Todd-AO, but the widescreen vistas available here (photographed by the legendary Winton C. Hoch) make this Fireside film the best in the travelogue department since Around the World. It must have looked truly wonderful on the giant screens of the day. And the experimental balloon of the title (dubbed the Jupiter by its inventor) is a delightfully authentic confection, with a carved figurehead like a ship and a genuine 19th century flavor. The plot isn’t terribly faithful to Verne’s original, I don’t think, and Fabian, as the juvenile romantic lead, makes Pat Boone look like Edwin Booth. But the action scenes are exciting, and the rest of the cast (including the heavenly Barbara Eden) is easy enough to watch. It also has a memorable theme song (performed by the Four Lads, one of those bawling men’s quartets so popular in those days) that sticks in your head like It’s A Small World, God help us. If you should find yourself in the mood and you’ve seen all of the true classics quite a bit, I’d suggest Five Weeks in a Balloon as a good way to get your Fireside fix on right now.