Elvis Presley's last movie "Change of Habit" qualifies as a tolerable romantic comedy wrapped up in a social welfare saga. The King is cast as Dr. John Carpenter, and he runs a medical clinic on Washington Street where people live in poverty. A loan shark known as the Banker operates the drug franchise. He believes that he is above the law. Three nuns on a secret mission to serve as Dr. Carpenter's nurses show up without their habits. Mary Tyler Moore as Sister Michelle, Jane Elliot as Sister Barbara, and Barbara McNair as Sister Irene encounter initial disapproval from the urban community as they arrive without their uniforms. At first, Carpenter thinks that they are looking for an abortionist when they inform him that they are his nurses. Most of Carpenter's patients are blue-collar, working stiffs and their families. Carpenter struggles to connect with Michelle. Little does he know about her vows, and she has a tough time dealing with him. Sister Irene makes house calls and decides to intervene in community affairs. Local black activists challenge Irene, and she aligns herself with them. Meantime, Sister Barbara battles against the high prices at the local grocery store that blacks must pay. Eventually, she forsakes her robes to plunge into local politics. Sadly, Carpenter never realizes his dream. Michelle doesn't forsake her vows to a celestial God for a physical pleasure. Along the way, Michelle helps a little girl who may be afflicted with autism. You won't find the usual bikini-clad babes in "Change of Habit." Unlike his early movies when he played a troubled youth, Presley plays a cool, calm authority figure here. Nothing about this movie truly stands out. Elvis dresses rather up-scale for a doctor in the ghetto. Regis Toomey plays an antagonistic priests who butts head with our three heroines. Elvis wades into one open-air celebration, but the police don't arrest him. Altogether, "Change of Habit" is more about the nuns than Elvis.

A lot of us who were born in the 50's can remember what we were doing on two events. The day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day Elvis Presley died. I had just gotten home from work and my then wife told me that it just came over the TV that Elvis Presley had died. A very heartbreaking day.We have learned so much about what was going on in Elvis Presley's life over the years because he was very private with his personal life which we are all entitled to.We now know that he desperately wanted material better than the beach movies that he had been stuck in and wanted to do drama like with King Creole and Flaming Star. It is so ironic and tragic that what turned out to be his last movie was the dramatic part that he had been begging for over the years. This could have been the breakthrough for a much more rewarding period and his growth as an actor.I like to think that he decided to take a break from acting for a few years to concentrate on his singing and return to acting with this as his launching pad. I have read that he was thinking of cleaning house and finally breaking with Parker since that would have freed him from the straitjacket that he had been in. I read that he also had decided to stop gorging on junk food and start working out again. Maybe if he had not gotten divorced he could have avoided what we now know as severe depression and losing control of his eating and not continuing to work out and take care of himself. Since he had announced that he was getting married again to Ginger Alden, he had not given up on life and was making plan for the future.A Change Of Habit gives us a glimpse of what could have been. Rest in peace Mr. Presley.

It seems a shame that someone with such talent as Elvis Presley consistently got such garbage for scripts. This movie shows what was still there, what had been there all along, if the material had just been a little better.This movie recalls the gutsy performances given in Jailhouse Rock and King Creole.A stronger support cast doesn't hurt either, and all the players seem equally committed to doing the film justice.Perfect, no.But overall, this is a very watchable movie, and testament to the talent that Elvis had.

One star for Elvis, one for Mary Tyler Moore, four stars for good intentions in depicting the racism, violence, and crime (particularly loan sharking in the character of The Banker) afflicting the poor. The other four stars are lost because of the relentless sexism the writers perpetrated while addressing practically every other -ism out there (even the inclusion of two significant minor characters with disabilities.) "What do you think we are, faggots?" This is the line from one of the men whose been enticed to move furniture after one of the nuns dresses like a prostitute and hollers "I need a man!" to try to get some help from the idlers across the street. Seriously. She puts on sheer black stockings, hooker lipstick and hair, and pulls her dress down off her shoulders. (Remember, this movie is not supposed to be one of Elvis' farces; we're supposed to take this seriously.) The faggot remark comes after she suggests the piano is very heavy. The nun apparently doesn't understand the comment, or chooses not to. Maybe by identifying homophobia with alcoholic ne'er-do-wells, the writers were trying to cast aspersions on that point of view; maybe that's as "out" as they could be about it.The Hispanic characters are depicted with some sympathy. The black nun, Irene (Barbara McNair), is trapped in a stairwell by two black activists who accuse her of "selling out" to "those ofay chicks" (that means white, if you haven't heard it before, and is a reference to the two white nuns), gets into a squabble about "Negro" v. "Black" and is told by the men that's she's too pretty not to stay pretty - a threat to mutilate her unless she... what? Unless she becomes a black separatist? What's the scene for, to identify black men as just generically all-purpose menacing? Well, yes, but only *angry and political* black men, contrasted to the woman's nose-to-the-grindstone apolitical and assimilationist work ethic. It's depressing to realize that yes, for its time, this probably *was* progressive. (In a later scene, Irene bluntly discusses the n-word with the Elvis character; that was *definitely* progressive back then!) Eventually, the black activists demonstrate peaceful intentions.So maybe, as some of the other commenters suggest, this was a serious attempt at being progressive racial and social justice commentary. The big bad however, here, is that the movie relies very heavily on sexual stereotyping. The nuns are subjected to the hateful misogynist Father Gibbons, the one who imitated the hooker is nearly subjected to what certainly sounds like it could develop into a gang rape "party" from the men who moved the furniture, and the young doctor treats his nurses very poorly indeed when they are just his office "girls" before he learns they are nuns.Also troubling, but not at all the movie's fault, is the diagnosis of a child as autistic "because she was rejected by her mother" - a theory totally discredited now - and the reliance on "holding" therapy, also discredited. "Holding" therapy has gotten children killed via suffocation, so don't try this at home. It's creepy to see it, even though the writers and producers did not know better at the time.But about the sexism, yes indeed, they did know better. By 1969, the Second Wave of feminism had been underway for several years and it's annoying to see MTM here, as she often was in "That Girl," forced to play a 50's stereotype as the 70's were about to begin.HIGHLIGHTS: A very young Ed Asner is a stitch as the neighborhood cop; if you're a fan, you won't want to miss his too-short, too-few scenes. Also, anyone who remembers the fury of pre-Vatican II Catholics at the inception of "guitar Masses" will be delighted by Elvis' rendering of same.