"Loving You" was Elvis's second film and tells the semi-autobiographical story of how Deke Rivers, a poor country boy from Texas, rises to fame and fortune as a rock star, and how he is loved by two women, his older business manager Glenda and a sweet young singer named Susan. (No prizes for guessing which of them eventually wins out). This plot, of course, is little more than an excuse for Elvis to sing a number of his hit songs, and not only plot, but also dialogue and characterisation, take second place to the music. (There is some inadvertent social comment about the attitudes of the period- although the action is set in Texas, a state with a sizeable black population, just about every face we see is white).
One of the songs which Elvis sings in this film is "Teddy Bear", in which he declares that he would rather be his girlfriend's teddy bear than her lion or tiger. This put me in mind of what "Quinlan's Film Stars" said about him, speaking generally of his film career, namely that his films only rarely caught the electric arrogance that set audiences alight. On stage he may have been a lion or tiger, but in the movies he could be about as threatening as a teddy bear. This was particularly true of his later films from the sixties, bland family fare which probably seemed rather dated even when they came out.
"Loving You" comes form an earlier stage of his career when he, and rock-and-roll music in general, was frequently denounced by the moralists of the day as a menace to society and a threat to civilised values, and the script makes light-hearted reference to this controversy. The film is certainly livelier and better than some of the later entries in the Elvis canon, such as "Fun in Acapulco" or the particularly awful "Paradise Hawaiian Style", but even so it is still more teddy bear than tiger, with little in it to help us understand, two generations later, just why Elvis was so denounced- or, for that matter, why he was so adored by millions of fans. It makes for undemanding viewing, with some enjoyable music, but I suspect that it is unlikely to be loved today by anyone who is not already a die-hard Elvis fan. 5/10
One of the songs which Elvis sings in this film is "Teddy Bear", in which he declares that he would rather be his girlfriend's teddy bear than her lion or tiger. This put me in mind of what "Quinlan's Film Stars" said about him, speaking generally of his film career, namely that his films only rarely caught the electric arrogance that set audiences alight. On stage he may have been a lion or tiger, but in the movies he could be about as threatening as a teddy bear. This was particularly true of his later films from the sixties, bland family fare which probably seemed rather dated even when they came out.
"Loving You" comes form an earlier stage of his career when he, and rock-and-roll music in general, was frequently denounced by the moralists of the day as a menace to society and a threat to civilised values, and the script makes light-hearted reference to this controversy. The film is certainly livelier and better than some of the later entries in the Elvis canon, such as "Fun in Acapulco" or the particularly awful "Paradise Hawaiian Style", but even so it is still more teddy bear than tiger, with little in it to help us understand, two generations later, just why Elvis was so denounced- or, for that matter, why he was so adored by millions of fans. It makes for undemanding viewing, with some enjoyable music, but I suspect that it is unlikely to be loved today by anyone who is not already a die-hard Elvis fan. 5/10