VIVA LAS VEGAS (1964)

Before I sat down to watch this, I only had one Elvis Presley movie under my belt, Blue Hawaii, which I saw on the pool deck of a Turner Classic Movie cruise ship in bright Caribbean sunshine with a cocktail by my side, so my attention was not exactly riveted on the screen. Hence, I remember very little about it except that Angela Lansbury played Elvis' mother and it seemed to have been shot on real Hawaiian beaches. On a recent long holiday weekend, I decided to give this one a shot, mostly because I like Ann-Margret, his leading lady. Elvis stars as himself… er, no, as a young, handsome hotshot race car driver who dreams of driving his own car in an upcoming race in Las Vegas. He has finally gotten together enough money to buy a new engine for the car, but he promptly loses it when Ann-Margret, playing a young, sexy swimming instructor at the Sands Hotel in Vegas whom Elvis is flirting with, pushes him in the water. The money gets sucked up into the pool filter so, because he has to start from scratch, he and his assistant (Nicky Blair) get jobs working at the Sands. They both end up entering a Sands talent show, he to win money for his engine, she to get enough money to give her aging fisherman father so he can buy his own boat. There's also the little matter of the climactic Las Vegas race which pits Elvis against Italian champ Cesare Danova (who himself is also making a play, somewhat half-heartedly, I thought, for Ann-Margret).

As I assumed going in, the plot here isn't really the point, it's watching pretty people sing and dance, while occasionally getting a mini-travelogue of Las Vegas in the mid-1960s. A well-filmed car race is the topper. One thing I was wrong about was Elvis himself. I never thought of him as much of an actor, and he certainly was never an Oscar nominee for any of his 30-some movies, but within the limits of his carefully-curated persona, he acquits himself well enough here. He sings, he dances, he exudes a relatively healthy masculine self-confidence, and there is never for a second any doubt that he'll get the girl. That is one of the movie's weaknesses: his romantic rival, Danova, is a wet rag who never registers any chemistry with Ann-Margret. (Of course, the fact that Elvis and Ann-Margret were apparently engaged in an affair during filming may also be a factor in the chemistry thing.) The screenplay is also on the weak side, generating little tension and giving our characters no personality aside from the actors provided with their pre-existing personas. The factor that leads to Elvis finally getting his engine is pretty much a deus ex machina. But generally, it's a painless experience, and every time that Ann-Margret is on screen, she wipes everything else away. William Demerest is able to make a bit of an impression as Ann-Margret's father. And that title song, performed twice, once over the opening credits and once by Elvis on camera, is spectacular. [TCM]