Long Live the Meadows!

Another movie that's been sitting on my DVR that I haven't blogged about before is coming up on TCM. This time, it's the Elvis Presley musical Viva Las Vegas, and the next airing on TCM will be tomorrow, April 22, at 4:30 PM. So once again, I sat down to watch it in order to be able to do a post on it in time for the next TCM showing.

Elvis Presley plays Lucky Jackson, a racecar mechanic who also owns his own racecar and dreams of competing in the upcoming Grand Prix race in Las Vegas. The only thing is, he needs a better engine for the car, and for that he needs money. Lucky winds up trying various ways in Las Vegas to get that money.

Meanwhile, in a garage in the desert somewhere between Vegas and Los Angeles, Lucky isn't the only one working on a car to enter in the race. The much wealthier Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova) is working on two cars, and is even offering Lucky the chance to ride one of the cars in the race. That offer, unsurprisingly, comes with strings attached, which would be that Lucky is the #2 on the team and drive in a way to help Mancini win the race. No dice, says Lucky. But the negotations are interrupted by a shapely pair of legs the two see while they're under the car looking that the undercarriage.

Those legs are attached to Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret), who is also looking to get to Las Vegas for reasons of her own. She wants to break into entertainment, and also works for a time as a swim instructor for one of the hotels. It should go without saying that both men show no small attraction for Rusty as the look for her and then find her. But it's more difficult for Lucky, since he seems to keep making things go wrong. This being an Elvis movie, you know it's not going to be a straightforward relationship, but that he's quite likely to wind up with The Girl in the last reel.

This being an Elvis movie, you also know that there are going to be quite a few musical numbers. However, this time, there aren't just songs for Elvis; there's quite a bit on stage for Ann-Margret to do as well, in an attempt to accelerate her career. Not that she needed much help, of course.

Eventually, we get to the final auto race, and Elvis is able to compete in his own car, although a lot of the shots look like rear-projection process photography. I can't imagine Col. Tom Parker wanting to risk Elvis driving a real racecar on a real race course at speed.

Viva Las Vegas is fairly typical for the sort of movie that Col. Tom was putting Elvis in: not particularly demanding, and it has a formula, but one that's well-executed. Part of that is down to Elvis' abilities as an entertainer, part of that is the presence of Ann-Margret, and part of it is that the Las Vegas strip looks quite photogenic in the movies. You'll not how movies like this don't go off-strip to the seedier parts of the city.

So while none of Elvis' movies are going to wind up in lists of the greatest movies of all time, Viva Las Vegas is eminently watchable and fun, and a good vehicle to see what Elvis was all about.