BB.5
(out of 5)
Elvis Presley gets out of the army and returns home to Honolulu, avoiding his wealthy parents in favour of basking in the sun and surf with his gorgeous, presumably native girlfriend (I say presumably because she’s a white girl who looks like she’s been sprayed with brown paint). Resisting his father’s wish that he enter the family business (canning pineapples) and live in their house that looks more appropriate for Bedrock than the Aloha state, Elvis instead takes up as a tour guide for a schoolteacher on holiday. The teacher has brought along three jailbait students with her, one of them particularly looking for trouble but unable to rope Elvis into her scheme. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is becoming jealous at the friendly attention she assumes is being paid to him by the leader of his tourist troupe. Breezy and completely simple, this film works best, like all of the King’s films, when the legendary musician is asked to croon, and boy does he ever. The songs are all lovely, which is good because there’s about three hundred thousand of them crammed into the plot, and the photography of the beautiful island is enough to make you melt. Hilariously enough, Angela Lansbury appears as Presley’s southern-fried, hickory-accented mother, and she has a rollicking good time playing the part (she was actually only ten years older than him).
USA, 1961
Directed by Norman Taurog
Story by Allan Weiss, Screenplay by Hal Kanter
Cinematography by Charles Lang
Produced by Hal B. Wallis
Music by Joseph J. Lilley
Production Design by Hal Pereira, Walter H. Tyler
Costume Design by Edith Head
Film Editing by Terry O. Morse
Cast Tags: Angela Lansbury, Christian Kay,Darlene Tompkins, Elvis Presley, Frank Atienza, Hilo Hattie, Howard McNear, Iris Adrian, Jenny Maxwell, Joan Blackman, John Archer,Jose De Vega, Lani Kai, Nancy Walters, Norman Taurog, Pamela Austin, Roland Winters, Steve Brodie, Tiki Hanalei
Writers Guild Award Nomination
Best Written American Musical
