SanteeFats This may be the best Elvis movie of them all. There are a lot of good songs and music in this film. Elvis comes back home to Hawaii after two years in the army. He does not want to go to work for his dad at the pineapple plantation he runs so he starts working as a tourist guide. His first set of customers are a youngish teacher escorting four teen girls. So you know things get interesting when the underage ones see Elvis. One is so infatuated with him she throws herself at him. Turned down she steals a jeep, crashes it by the beach, runs into the water (I guess to drown herself). Of course Elvis shows up and rescues her. He administers a spanking which straightens out I guess. The main cast are all proved old timey type actors and do a great job. I did find Angela Lansbury's role to grate some because of the poor Southern accent and the fact that she played Elvis's mother but was only ten years older than him at the time. All in all though this is a very nicely done show with a lot of Hawaiians actually getting real acting parts.

mike48128 The spoiled rich girl gets spanked by Elvis and "Ito Eats" is the worst Elvis song ever. That being said, one of the best of Elvis' films because: 1. It really was filmed in Hawaii, and some of the scenery is gorgeous. 2. Joan Blackman, his Hawaiian girlfriend and fiancé, is also gorgeous. 3. Some of the best songs ever, including "Can't Help Falling in Love With You". Best selling soundtrack of all the Elvis pictures. 4. The restored widescreen version takes the excess "blueness" out of the color tint. 5. The beautiful "Hawaiian Wedding Song" and the wedding at The Coco Palms Resort. They had to "float" the scene twice as the actual lagoon was that short.Negatives: 1. Some really bad acting by most of the supporting actors. Angela Landsbury's accent and acting is atrocious. 2. The houseboy "Ping Pong" is an obvious Aisian stereotype. 3. Elvis'"boss", who went on to play "Floyd the Barber" on "The Andy Griffith Show", is terrible. 4. Many stupid scenes: Ito pigs out at the fishing luau. The spoiled rich girl runs into the ocean to drown herself, followed by that infamous spanking by Elvis. 5.That horrible jailhouse scene with a stupid "Pineapple in the Can" song. 6. Elvis' acting isn't' so hot either. Very wooden.I stayed at The Coca Palms in 1979, and the rooms really did look like exactly like that. The window screens were removed for the filming, but without them, the bugs would eat you alive! It still remains as one of the best Elvis films ever because of the (good) songs and scenery alone.

funkyfry Out of the 3 films Elvis made which were set in Hawaii, this is far and away the best and ranks IMHO in the top 5 of all his films, second best in the 1960s behind only "Viva Las Vegas" which had the advantage of a better co-star. This film is a joy to watch, with lovely on-location photography and some of Elvis' better songs including his classic "Can't Help Falling in Love".The story is a sparse affair concerning Chad, a returned G.I. who wants to make his own way in life but whose overbearing mother (Angela Lansbury, great as usual) wants only to hear of him working in the family's pineapple business. Chad figures out a way to get a job with a tourist agency taking advantage of his knowledge of the islands, but a crisis involving one of his underage charges threatens to cut his new career short.The film itself is better than the average Elvis film, not so much because of any redeeming themes or ideas (i.e. "King Creole") but moreso because the script gives the characters witty dialog and the narrative exposition is just heavy enough to keep the audience interested without becoming absurdly dramatic. For example one line that always gets a laugh from an audience is when Chad is trying to convince the schoolteacher that he will be a good tour guide, and she asks him "Mr Gates, are you sure you can handle a teacher and 4 teenage girls?". Just the line itself gets a laugh. This movie has a lot of humor that works very well, it's not like you're sitting there saying "oh look at what Elvis is doing"; a lot of the comedy are situations that would be funny with any decent comedian. Here, as in just a few of his later films like "Follow that Dream", Elvis gets to show he has real ability and good timing for comedy.The narrative structure itself is fairly effective in terms of drawing the audience in -- always a tough job with a story that has so little action and drama. First we're presented with a fairly standard parents vs. kid dramatic story as described above, and then when we meet the tourists there is another important character, the teenage tease Ellie Corbett. She's a rich kid's daughter who feels unloved and is a bit of a JD if you know what I mean. She doesn't want to go see the pineapple farm, she doesn't want to learn to surf, and she doesn't want to attend a hookie-lau. The audience perhaps identifies with her in some sense, and the elements in the audience that want to resist the urge to enjoy this Hawaiian treat are overcome by way of Ms. Corbett's objections being gradually over-ruled. Also she represents a key in the narrative for Chad -- although she initially creates a romantic confusion between Chad and his girlfriend, eventually it's Chad's ability to reach out to her that proves his maturity and his ability at his job. This takes his character beyond the parent vs. child dichotomy and into the world of maturity, where we leave him.

bkoganbing Blue Hawaii, the title song of this film, was originally from the score of another Paramount film Waikiki Wedding which starred Bing Crosby in 1937. Bing sold a few records of that one, albeit they were 78s back then, and Elvis nicely revives it and sells a few more. Crosby's film was made to take advantage of a whole lot of publicity he received for a trip to Hawaii. But Paramount as they usually did with his films back they made them on the cheap and Hawaii for Waikiki Wedding was recreated on the back lot.Bing must have been a little jealous and who could have blamed him when Paramount did this film completely on location in Hawaii for the King. And Elvis got to go back to Hawaii for another film in Paradise, Hawaiian Style. Elvis got a whole lot of musical numbers here including the title tune which he sings over the opening credits. He does a rockabilly version of the French song Alouette and with different lyrics, the Mexican love ballad, La Paloma. And he borrows a hit from Andy Williams when he reprises the Hawaiian Wedding Song. Of course no film set in Hawaii is complete without Aloha Oe. But the big song from this film is one of Presley's greatest Can't Help Falling In Love With You. He sings it during a scene for a birthday party for Joan Blackman's grandmother. It's sort of done in a throwaway manner like the producer's didn't think it would be the big number in the film. It might surprise Presley fans that this blockbuster hit was also recorded by another RCA Victor artist named Perry Como for one of his albums. Perry does a nice job with it, but it ain't a patch on the King's version.Elvis is a rich young kid who'd like very much to get out from under Mom and Dad and prove himself. He's even done a hitch in the army, but that doesn't help. Parents are played by Roland Winters and Angela Lansbury.Angela Lansbury recounted a story where she and her husband had dinner with Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis when they were casting Blue Hawaii. She said Elvis was a nice, polite young man who barely said three words during the dinner. The talk was all from Colonel Tom who was making all kinds of offers to the future Jessica Fletcher to be in this film. Angela's career was somewhat in a dry spell, she hadn't made The Manchurian Candidate yet or appeared on Broadway in Mame. So she was quite willing to appear.I gained some insight into how Colonel Parker handled Elvis with that story. If you look at the cast and even the behind the camera credits of his films, you'll see them populated with a whole lot of Hollywood veterans. I'll bet there were many such dinners during Elvis's film career.To be sure Presley was certainly the Colonel's meal ticket. But I would have to say that he made every effort to see that Elvis and his films were given the best possible production values. I think that's why the King had a long sustained film career until public tastes change which they inevitably do. Also musicals, even Elvis's became too cost prohibitive to produce any more.Blue Hawaii marks the height of Presley's singing and film career. The Beatles hadn't come on the scene yet, the King was still ruling the roost on the record charts and his films were grossing big box office. And unless your Bing Crosby and feel a twinge of jealousy that his Hawaii film was done on the cheap, you'll like Blue Hawaii very much. It's nice entertainment from a great entertainer.