Alicia
I love this movie so much
SunnyHello
Nice effects though.
Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
beauzee
his box office was clearly slipping..so it was ..back to Hawaii..and recovered fame and fortune like with BLUE HAWAII and GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. not really.except for a couple of awful songs esp. written for the movie, the soundtrack is good, although the best song ("Sand Castles") was used only on vinyl! > in fact, the soundtrack album was shockingly well produced! how did that happen? guess we can say something good did come out of this mess.nice touch that a real local celebrity, the young Donna Butterworth, got to act and sing with Elvis and they have a nice chemistry. but that should send up the proverbial red flag...this ain't gonna be a serious drama or groovy comedy with Presley but yet another, light hearted romp, where Elvis dodges aggressive chicks and finds solace in entertaining a kid.storyline is okay..Elvis has shifted from boats and cars to helicopters. but he is overweight and obviously disgusted. the noticeable gut on his short-sleeved aviation shirt and black house paint on his sprayed coiff make him look anything but cool.not worth it even for deep fans. how much money did Hal Wallis waste on this? who knows? instead of making a great drama with 3 songs, with Elvis doing karate and anything he wanted to do, it was business as usual. let's assume he *lost* fans with this.
Michael_Elliott
Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) * 1/2 (out of 4) Elvis plays a pilot who travels to Hawaii to start up his own business but he ends up falling for a woman (Suzanna Leigh) and this might just cost him more than his little bitty heart. I guess I should start off by saying that Elvis gives a truly bad performance here but considering the script I guess you can't blame him nor can you blame him for doing so many drugs. It's strange but it's easy to tell that he's not interested in the film as he pretty much sleepwalks through the entire thing but I also noticed that a lot of the scenes seemed to be rushed by him as if he was wanting to get the film over very quickly and to do so he read the lines extremely fast. It also seems like he might not have even known the lines as he's constantly looking to the side of him and appears to be reading some of the lines. I wouldn't bash him too hard because the film is stupid from the opening titles to the very last scene. The supporting players are all pretty lousy and Dona Butterworth didn't impress me either. There's one incredibly silly scene with them two singing on a beach but there's an even worse scene with Elvis flying a helicopter while singing to a bunch of dogs who eventually get into a fight. There's some nice locations but that's pretty much it. I was also shocked to see that David Hess from The Last House on the Left wrote one of the songs.
MARIO GAUCI
This is yet another resistible vehicle for Elvis Presley with a silly plot (here he's an irresponsible playboy pilot who opens up his own helicopter service), tropical setting, a plethora of girls, child interest, and below-par musical numbers (his crooning to a bunch of dogs while up in the air has to be the nadir of his singing career!). Elvis had already done something similar with BLUE HAWAII (1961) – but that's one which I haven't caught up with so far.Michael Moore (no relation to the controversial documentarist of the same name) had been the assistant or second-unit director of six previous Elvis titles; considering the dire results here, it's no wonder he wasn't called upon to helm another later on! Popular Asian-American actor James Shigeta is Presley's business partner; the female cast includes Suzanna Leigh (later a British horror/Hammer starlet) and Marianna Hill (she had already appeared uncredited in the Elvis film ROUSTABOUT [1964] and would go on to feature in such heavyweight modern classics as MEDIUM COOL [1969] and THE GODFATHER PART II [1974]!). Shigeta's little girl – she even gets to duet with Elvis on a couple of songs – is played by Donna Butterworth, who had debuted in the Jerry Lewis comedy THE FAMILY JEWELS (1965); it was also nice to see Grady Sutton, a favorite W.C. Fields foil back in the day, as the enthusiastic but nervous crocodile-shoe salesman.
John Seal
Elvis had clearly had one too many peanut butter and banana sandwiches before making this travelogue that must have been underwritten by the Hawaiian tourist board. The story is minimal, the songs amongst the worst of Elvis' movie career. Watch him try to land a helicopter with four dogs in the cockpit. Watch the happy natives do the hula--endlessly. Watch the cute child actress entertain the tourists. Me, I enjoyed the scenery, and Suzanna Leigh is quite attractive.
