Friday, October 26, 2007

Movie review - Elvis #12 - "It Happened at the World's Fair" (1963) **

Elvis visiting the 1962 Seattle Fair sounds like a really fun idea, but this is a flat Elvis movie. Expos don't really have the production value of somewhere like Hawaii - when you think about it, its mostly just a lot of queues, really, though the final bit with Elvis walking in front of a marching band is effective, as is a romantic sequence on top of the tower.

This film is certainly a long way from State Fair or Meet Me in St Louis which used fairs very well - it probably helped those films being more ensemble pieces about families, so you could go to a variety of different locations with a variety of characters, whereas here we're stuck with Elvis most of the time.

The weak story has Elvis as a pilot trying to raise money to get his plane back - only the filmmakers dump that plot for large slabs of time, instead having our star romance a nurse and look after a Chinese orphan.

The main debit of the film is Joan O'Brien who is the female lead - its an easy role, a haughty ice maiden who melts under the withering glare of the star's charms, but she muffs it; O'Brien played the big boobed girl in Operation Petticoat and without her boobs emphasised here, she's a nothing.

The best bit is when Elvis pays a kid (a young Kurt Russell) to kick him; the finale, singing "Happy Ending", isn't bad either. Gary Lockwood, who played a villain in Wild in the Country is Elvis' best friend here; later on, Bill Bixby played a villain in Clambake and a best friend in Speedway.

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