Strong and Moving!

ridiculous rating

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

If you're looking for Elvis Presley on a beach, on an island or in the tropics and looking for girls or fighting them off!, then this film is not for you. "The Trouble with Girls" centers on a circus-like festival that travels from town to town and stops in this little hamlet. Residents include Dabney Coleman and Sheree North, and horror film veterans Vincent Price and John Carradine make cameos, which are probably the best attributes of this film. It's not that the film is that horrible, but it's not that terribly good either. In the beginning much of the perspective is seen from a little girl (who is very cute and adorable) and a little boy. Even though most of Elvis' beach movies are dismissed as generic and formulaic fluff (such as "Clambake,") they can be relaxing and enjoyable, if one likes that sort of movie. But this was all a hodge podge, with not much singing in it and no plot to follow and no one to really like. Elvis doesn't even have that much air time in it. There may be worse Elvis films (I know there are,) but this was a major disappointment in all categories of a relaxing time with Elvis.

Strictly for fans of the King this movie is one of the worst I have ever seen. It looked as though it was written and directed by Ed Wood without the props falling over. Elvis' hair changes from one camera angle to another, there is no real plot, all of the characters are predictable. The only saving grace was.....well....there was no saving grace. It's bad.

While this film is not one of his all time best, it is certainly one of his better later films. It's interesting to see Elvis in a film set in the 1920's rather than the psychadelic 1960's. This movie had an interesting plot, but was marred by some rather bad acting. Elvis was okay and the scene with Vincent Price was interesting, but most of the acting was lame.

Although this film is ultimately a dreary, draggy bore, it is not an embarrassment, providing as it does a distinct change of pace from the swivel-hipped singer's wretched films of the mid-60s. Set in the 1920s, the only bikini in sight is a one-piece worn by "guest star" Joyce Van Patten, and the few songs are performed in an appropriate setting--a stage (a rarity in the later Presley movies). Elvis is the manager of a travelling tent show rocked by mini-crises and a murder. It's all very lightweight and lethargic, but it does mark a significant change from the godawfal tripe to which Presley lent his name and talent in previous years. M-G-M, however, apprehensive that an Elvis movie called "Chataqua" was too drastic a change for his fans, re-christened the film "The Trouble with Girls" (and added a subtitle--"and how to get into it"--that does not appear on screen), which has nothing to do with the movie and makes it sound like another Presley potboiler. It's a little better than that, though it now ranks as nothing more than a memento, as significant to his accomplishments as one of those scarves he doled out to the adoring females who populated his Las Vegas performances. It's a souvenir that says nothing of the man's talent or his revolutionary achievements.