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Blue Hawaii
Elvis Presley had one of his biggest hits with a splashy and colorful outing from 1961 called Blue Hawaii, which is no classic, but could have been if the creative team had trusted their story a little more than they did their star.
Elvis plays Chad Gates, a young man who returns home to Hawaii after two years in the army and instead of taking his expected place as vice president of his father's pineapple company, takes a job at his girlfriend's tourist agency as a tour guide. Of course, in the process Chad finds himself up to his neck in females, not just his longtime girlfriend (Joan Blackman), but an attractive schoolteacher (Nancy Walters) and a spoiled teenager (Jenny Maxwell) who hates her life but thinks that throwing herself at Chad might improve it.
Screenwriter Hal Kanter and director Norman Taurog have collaborated on a relatively solid story here that had the potential to be something really special, but instead of trusting in a decent story with universal themes, Kanter and Taurog instead decide to throw the weight of the film on its star by having him sing a song every ten minutes of the running time. There's even a scene where the character gets thrown in jail and we get a brief closeup of him behind bars before he and his back up band (who follow him throughout the film and are also conveniently arrested) before they can break into yet another tune. When Elvis isn't singing, the only other real energy here comes from the on-target and unexpected casting of Angela Lansbury as Sara Lee Gates, Chad's clingy and slightly bigoted mother who thinks Chad's new job is beneath him and that his girlfriend is pure evil. Though Sarah Lee sounds a bit like a cartoon character, she still provides the few solid laughs that this film provides.
As mentioned, the film is chock full of songs that Elvis delivers for a good third of the films' running time, including "Almost Always True", "Moonlight Swim", "Beach Boy Blues", "Rocka Hula Baby" and one of the biggest smashes of Elvis' recording career, "Can't Help Fallin in Love."
The movie is kind of slowly paced, but there is some beautiful Hawaiian scenery and in addition to Lansbury, I also enjoyed Howard McNear as Blackman's boss and Roland Winters as Chad's dad. You might also recognize one of the members of Elvis' band as Jose De Vega, who also appeared in the Oscar winning Best Picture of 1961, West Side Story, where he played Chino. There are worse ways to spend 100 minutes.
Elvis Presley had one of his biggest hits with a splashy and colorful outing from 1961 called Blue Hawaii, which is no classic, but could have been if the creative team had trusted their story a little more than they did their star.
Elvis plays Chad Gates, a young man who returns home to Hawaii after two years in the army and instead of taking his expected place as vice president of his father's pineapple company, takes a job at his girlfriend's tourist agency as a tour guide. Of course, in the process Chad finds himself up to his neck in females, not just his longtime girlfriend (Joan Blackman), but an attractive schoolteacher (Nancy Walters) and a spoiled teenager (Jenny Maxwell) who hates her life but thinks that throwing herself at Chad might improve it.
Screenwriter Hal Kanter and director Norman Taurog have collaborated on a relatively solid story here that had the potential to be something really special, but instead of trusting in a decent story with universal themes, Kanter and Taurog instead decide to throw the weight of the film on its star by having him sing a song every ten minutes of the running time. There's even a scene where the character gets thrown in jail and we get a brief closeup of him behind bars before he and his back up band (who follow him throughout the film and are also conveniently arrested) before they can break into yet another tune. When Elvis isn't singing, the only other real energy here comes from the on-target and unexpected casting of Angela Lansbury as Sara Lee Gates, Chad's clingy and slightly bigoted mother who thinks Chad's new job is beneath him and that his girlfriend is pure evil. Though Sarah Lee sounds a bit like a cartoon character, she still provides the few solid laughs that this film provides.
As mentioned, the film is chock full of songs that Elvis delivers for a good third of the films' running time, including "Almost Always True", "Moonlight Swim", "Beach Boy Blues", "Rocka Hula Baby" and one of the biggest smashes of Elvis' recording career, "Can't Help Fallin in Love."
The movie is kind of slowly paced, but there is some beautiful Hawaiian scenery and in addition to Lansbury, I also enjoyed Howard McNear as Blackman's boss and Roland Winters as Chad's dad. You might also recognize one of the members of Elvis' band as Jose De Vega, who also appeared in the Oscar winning Best Picture of 1961, West Side Story, where he played Chino. There are worse ways to spend 100 minutes.