Girl Happy (1965)

Director: Boris Sagal

Cast: Elvis Presley, Shelley Fabares, Harold J. Stone

Synopsis: A Chicago mobster hires a rock and roll singer and his band to keep an eye on his daughter during Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

With the exception of earlier efforts like Jailhouse Rock and King Creole, Elvis Presley’s musicals were always thin on plot, the storyline serving as nothing more than a showcase for Presley’s raw vitality, and a link between music numbers. Girl Happy is no exception, featuring a wafer-thin plot about Presley and his chums chaperoning a gangster’s holidaying daughter in Fort Lauderdale. Although Presley’s tendency towards plumpness is already in evidence in this film, the raw vitality is still there, which is just as well because the musical numbers are largely forgettable, meaning Girl Happy relies entirely upon Presley’s presence.

The screen is filled throughout with vibrant colours and enthusiastic twenty-something teenagers gyrating wildly (and hilariously – nothing dates a movie faster than a ‘hip’ dance scene) to Presley’s music, and an endless procession of bikini-clad girls to keep the boyfriends of all the Presley fans interested. Oh, and Elvis wears a dress – something I thought (and, with hindsight, should have prayed) I would never see.

Harmless fun, but, if you really want to see an Elvis movie, throw one of his concert films into the VCR.
(Reviewed 10th May 2002)