The Elvis Presley Movie formula was created with Blue Hawaii. Both the movie and it's soundtrack were a phenomenal success. 14 songs was by far the most that had been in any Elvis movie up to this point (and he'd already done 7 by now)and not until 1968's 'Charro' would The King play a serious role with no songs. In the lightweight 'Blue Hawaii' Elvis plays Chad Gates, the son of a rich family with their own Pineapple juice company on the beautiful island of Hawaii. After watching this movie and Paradise, Hawaiian Style you'll certainly feel the pull to want to visit America's "50th state". His family want Elvis/Chad to settle down following his return from two years Army service, but fun seeking, laid back Chad has no desire for the easy life at his family business and instead opts to set up his own Tourist company - his first job being taking an attractive teacher and four beautiful female, of course, university students. Three of whom are smitten with the dashing, singing Elvis. The other, a stroppy spoilt girl not interested in the trip at all... Although popular amongst Elvis fans, particularly female Elvis fans, it's not one of my favourites at all. Even the soundtrack is lacklustre. Three great songs - the title track, 'No More' and of course 'Can't Help Falling in Love' but several very poor songs such as 'Ito Eats' and 'Slicin Sand' (both totally unnecassary to the scenes anyway, as there are already songs played around them.)

The first Elvis film to have a widely marketed DVD remastering, it represents his most frequent nonsense cinematic plot, about the heir to a wealthy and powerful family's money and connections hiding out at a resort to find a girl interested in more than just his family connections and wealth. Released in 1961, it puffs up location shots on Oahu and Elvis at his most machismo appearing in elegant suits, upscale resort wear and at his best physical tone ever in the skimpiest swimwear the censors would allow. Angela Lansbury, playing a rare turn for her as a physical comic marrying earlier her chauffeur in Atlanta and flying to Oahu to live and raise Elvis, has the only other superstar turn. There are more songs packed in than usual, two actually lyric rewrites of classic melodies and none representing Elvis' most famous contributions to the music world. The major money maker of his long film career, most of the storyboard is bot pleasant and enticing. The exception is the scene in which Elvis is expected to be the tour guide and chaperone of four teenage girls on vacation on the island, unaware their chaperone is the secret fiancée of Elvis' father's American mainland boss. Some of the tense sequences, when a young charge acts out by climbing into Elvis' bed to then bait Elvis into spending time behind bars when his fists fly at a hotel bar to then crash a stolen jeep as an underage driver on the lam, seem a bit to R rated and too melodramatic for the flow of a mild comedy with a mild romantic fantasy ending.

After leaving the Army, former G.I. Chad Gates returns to his home in Hawaii, where his wealthy parents want him to go to work at his father's Great Southern Hawaiian Fruit Company. Chad, however, would rather spend his days surfing and hanging out at the beach with his friends and his pretty half-Hawaiian girlfriend Maile (pronounced "Miley"). He realises, however, that he needs to take up some sort of occupation, so he starts as a tour guide at the travel agency where Maile works. His first assignment is to show a schoolmistress and a group of her teenage students around the island and complications ensue when both the teacher, Abigail, and Ellie, one of her pupils, fall for Chad. It has been said that this film set the tone for Elvis Presley's future film career; a musical romantic comedy featuring pretty locations, prettier girls, mediocre songs and banal plots. Several of his later films would also fit this formula, including his two others set in Hawaii, "Girls! Girls! Girls!" and "Paradise, Hawaiian Style". (Presley did not spend all his time working for the Hawaii tourist board; he was equally ready to offer his services to other prime holiday destinations, hence the likes of "Fun in Acapulco" or "Viva Las Vegas"). None of these films made any great demands on his acting skills, and in "Blue Hawaii" he is (as he often was) so laid-back as to be practically horizontal. Although Elvis was, in chronological terms, still young (only 26) when he made this film, he was, in career terms, already middle-aged. Gone was the hip-swivelling Elvis the Pelvis of the mid-fifties, the wild young rock-and-roller denounced from pulpits all across America as a danger to the morals of the nation's youth. In his place was Elvis the lounge singer, a younger, better-looking version of Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby, crooning a string of bland, middle-of-the-road easy- listening numbers, in this film often with a vaguely Hawaiian flavour. Only occasionally does he break into anything resembling rock-and-roll. The only memorable song here is his well-known hit "Can't Help Falling in Love", and even that is a gentle romantic ballad, unlikely to be denounced from the pulpit of even the most censorious preacher. In some of Elvis' films his leading ladies were well-known actresses, such as Ursula Andress in "Fun in Acapulco" or Ann-Margret in "Viva Las Vegas", but here his love interest is the attractive but obscure Joan Blackman. The only other actor of any celebrity in the movie is Angela Lansbury who plays Chad's mother Sarah Lee. Lansbury started her career in the mid forties playing pretty young things, but by the time of "Blue Hawaii" she had settled down into what was to be her normal niche of playing women considerably older than her actual age. (In 1961 she was 36, only ten years older than Elvis himself). She plays Sarah Lee with an exaggerated, stagey southern drawl; the Gates family are supposed to have moved to Hawaii from Georgia, a detail presumably inserted to explain away Elvis' own southern accent, but Sarah Lee ends up speaking with a quite different accent from either her son or her husband. Lansbury later rated her performance here as one of the worst in her career and it is hard to disagree with her. "Blue Hawaii" was clearly intended as wholesome family entertainment, but there are two points at which it might cause some raising of eyebrows today. The first is the (presumably) unintentional double entendre which occurs when Maile asks Chad whether he can satisfy a teacher and four teenagers. The second comes when Chad picks Ellie up, puts her across his knee and gives her a good spanking. Ellie is, admittedly, an obnoxiously spoilt and sulky little brat, seventeen going on six- it is not hard to see why Chad prefers the more placid Maile- but even so such behaviour would today count as either sexual harassment or criminal assault. Perhaps in the early sixties there was a clause in Hawaiian state law permitting tour guides to administer corporal punishment to unruly teenagers.My copy of "Blue Hawaii" is a DVD recently given away free as part of a newspaper promotion, which suggests that there must still be a market for this sort of thing, as they are hardly going to give away films that nobody wants to watch. Presumably that market consists of die-hard subjects of King Elvis, especially the older generation who can still remember him in his prime. I suspect that were it not for the presence of the great man "Blue Hawaii" would be just another long-forgotten cheesy sixties beach movie. 5/10

Incredibly weak outing for Elvis Presley, here playing a soldier returning home to Honolulu and fighting with his parents over the direction of his life (seems E.P. wants to be a guide for tourists, but his folks would rather have him go into the family business--pineapples). Angela Lansbury (playing Elvis' mother!) slips too easily into a caricature of a clucking mother-hen, possibly to help compensate for her miscasting; Joan Blackman is an entirely forgettable love-interest. Presley himself looks rather bored, and even his songs are mediocre. Film was very popular in 1961, mostly with Presley-fans who were celebrating his own return from service, and with viewers who never got to Hawaii themselves. *1/2 from ****