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
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