I've always wanted to ride in a hot air balloon but am afraid of heights. I enjoy watching this exciting, colorful, adventure movie with an all star cast(including the monkey) over and over. It moves along at a nice pace with lots of fun, adventure and a bit of romance. It also had a bit of slapstick comedy which I don't usually care for in the movies I watch but didn't seem to mind in this one. The theme song is a very catchy tune. This movie came out the year I was born and I can't believe I've never heard of it before. As a kid growing up I was an avid watcher of some of Irwin Allen's other productions like the series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space, which I now own on DVD. I would definitely recommended it for family entertainment.

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.

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.

Apart from the fact that Charles Bennett collaborated with Irwin Allen on this project, there was absolutely nothing at all to extract from this film. I read the novel alongside '80 Days Around the World' by Jules Verne and was deeply offended by his attitude towards the marginalized. By watching the film, I thought Charles Bennett (with his experience of working with Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille) would be able to bring something to the project. Instead, the film was just a continuity of the collaboration between Bennett and his successive producers and directors. The aging Sir Cedric Hardwicke and the insipid Peter Lorre added nothing whatsoever to the entertainment value.