Too much of everything

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Veteran helmer Richard Thorpe directed two movies with Elvis. "Jailhouse Rock" came first in 1957, and the second one "Fun in Acapulco" followed in 1963. Comparably, "Jailhouse Rock" qualifies as the better of the two, with more grit and realism. "Jailhouse Rock" ranks one of Elvis' best musicals, and its black & white look contributes to its distinctive look. If you're counting, "Fun in Acapulco" was the King of Rock & Roll's thirteenth cinematic outing. Naturally, the action unfolds in scenic Acapulco. In real life, Elvis was nowhere near the popular Mexican resort spot when Thorpe was lensing the film with Oscar-winning cinematographer Daniel L. Fapp of "West Side Story" fame. According to Parménides García Saldaña, in his book entitled "Rey Criollo," the authorities had branded Elvis as an undesirable because two of his early movies had created such a stink in Mexico. Anyway, Elvis warbles such songs as "Fun In Acapulco," "Vino, Dinero Y Amor," "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here," "Mexico," "El Toro," "Marguerita," "The Bullfighter Was A Lady," "(There's) No Room To Rhumba In A Sports Car," "Bossa Nova Baby," "You Can't Say No In Acapulco," and "Guadalajara." Other than Top 10 Billboard hit "Bossa Nova Baby," most of these tunes are entirely forgettable like this largely disposable romantic musical comedy. "Fun in Acapulco" is of some interest because Elvis plays a character with a flawed background. Look closely and you'll spot "Andy Griffith" regular Howard McNear in one of the night club scenes. Young Larry Domasin makes a cute little boy who serves as Elvis' manager. I cannot help feeling that Raoul might have been an in-joke jab at Elvis' promoter Colonel Tom Parker. Paul Lukas has a neat little role as a cook. "Fun in Acapulco" features only one Elvis brawl and it occurs ten minutes from fade-out.When we first see Elvis, he is Mike Windgren, the captain of a yacht. The daughter of the wealthy man who owns the yacht, Janie Harkins (Teri Hope of "Pajama Game") is a spoiled, bratty girl who drools over Elvis. Elvis wants nothing to do with this 'jail bait' siren, so she has him fired when her father catches her with alcohol in an Acapulco bar. Fortunately, Mike encounters a homeless Mexican shoeshine boy with street smarts, Raoul Almeido (Larry Domasin), who helps Elvis snag a job singing at the Acapulco Hilton run by one of his cousins, Mr. Ramírez (Alberto Morin of "Rio Grande"), who constantly has trouble with his current singer El Trovador who gives him nothing but grief. Mike agrees to fill in for El Trovador, if Ramírez will let him lifeguard at the pool "during the siesta for room and board, no pay." Ramírez does like to upset his employers and he fears that the current lifeguard, Moreno (Alejandro Rey of "Mr. Majestyk"), who is a cliff diver, will object to Mike's presence. Of course, matters are helped that Elvis has his eye on Moreno's stunning girlfriend, Marguerita Dauphin (Ursula Andress of "Dr. No"); later, Mike learns that the Hilton chef Maximillian Dauphin (Paul Lukas of "Watch on the Rhine") is Marguerita's father. An interesting scene occurs later when Elvis ascends to the top of the diving board at the Hilton and imagines himself as a high wire trapeze artist in the circus. He looks down at the pool but sees a circus arena. As it turns out, he was part of a high-wire family trapeze act called "The Flying Windgrens, and he misses the man that he is supposed to catch. Mike's brother plunged to his death. Mike lacks the nerve to dive off the board. This is probably the most interesting facet of this Elvis character. "Girls! Girls!Girls!" scenarist Allan Weiss hammers home this point when Mike refuses to be photographed after he wows the audiences who had listened to El Trovador. Predictably, Mike and Moreno clash over Marguerita. Secretly, Marguerita wants to go to America, and she believes that if Mike marries her that her father and she can immigrate. Meanwhile, Mike is trying to date Dolores Gomez (Elsa Cárdenas of "Giant") when Moreno interferes again. Later, when Mike performs again with Dolores as his date, Marguerita and Moreno are in the audience. Clearly, Marguerita is upset that she didn't come with Mike so she forces Moreno to take her home. Later, on a cliff overlooking the city at night, Dolores and Mike are smooching in her convertible sports car when they almost roll off the cliff because Dolores raised the emergency brake that was between them. This was an amusing little scene. Dolores is a somewhat interesting character because she is a female Mexican bullfighter. Before long Raoul has Mike booked in almost every night club in Acapulco. Eventually, Moreno learns about Mike's tragic history, and he calls Mike a "chicken" to his face. Mike receives a wire from his mother and father who want him to return to America so they can renew their act. Of course, the ultimate act for our hero to prove his courage is to dive off the challenging 136-foot cliffs of La Quebrada. Mike scales the mountain from the other side because the crowd prevents him from entering the dive area. We learn that Mike is Catholic because he bows at a shrine and makes the cross of Saint Mary before he makes his leap of faith. Of course, he completes the dive with no difficulty.Interestingly enough, we don't see Mike marry MMarguerita and take her father and her to America so he can resume his high wire trapeze act. Altogether, "Fun in Acapulco" makes for a harmless diversion.

After her big break role in Dr. No Ursula Andress got to co-star with Elvis Presley in Fun In Acapulco. Not that she or Elvis got to have any fun in Acapulco off the set because Paramount did all their location footage with doubles. On learning that fact I carefully watched all the scenes and if you examine it closely which the average member of the movie-going public did not do you can clearly see that the King is being doubled.Still Acapulco is certainly shown to best advantage with that second unit cinematography. And Elvis sings some nice songs, none of which really charted for him. Fun In Acapulco find Elvis working as a charter boat skipper who gets fired and is stranded in the famous Mexican resort town. He has a past which involves him being involved in a family trapeze act and when he failed to catch his brother during the act resulting in the brother's demise it left him with a fear of heights and failure. Still he can sing and he gets a job at one of the resorts due to an enterprising shoeshine boy played by little Larry Domasin. And he gets two girls falling for him, lady bullfighter Elsa Cardenas and an exiled princess Ursula Andress. That gets Mexican high diving champion Alejandro Rey all bent out of shape. Ursula's dad, a former Grand Duke from some Zenda like duchy is played by Paul Lukas who is now making a living as the head chef at the resort hotel Presley is singing at. Another great example of Colonel Tom Parker getting Elvis the best support possible. I have no doubt that Parker also got former MGM contract director Richard Thorpe who did a number of MGM classics back in the day to direct the film.Elvis does a bit of acting here and Fun In Acapulco gives the King a bit of an acting job which he carries off as he struggles with his fears.I'm sure Presley felt gypped along with the rest of the cast in not actually shooting in Acapulco. The second unit shooting though gives Fun In Acapulco a look like the Hawaiian location films that Presley did. And it's a nice story with a capable cast backing up the King.

"Fun in Acapulco" was one of a number of musical comedies made by Elvis Presley during the sixties, and follows what was a common formula in Elvis's movies- a setting in a popular tourist resort, attractive scenery, equally attractive girls, and a string of easy-listening tunes, often with an ethnic flavour. Although Elvis was still a good-looking twenty-something in 1963, in career terms he was middle-aged, the wild young rocker of the fifties having been replaced by a more family-friendly crooner. Just as much of the music in "Blue Hawaii" had a vaguely Hawaiian tinge, much of the music here has a distinctive Latin flavour. (Not exclusively Mexican; the film's best-known number is "Bossa Nova Baby", and the bossa nova was from Brazil, not Mexico).The plot is essentially a love-triangle involving Elvis's character Mike Windgren and two pretty girls, a female bullfighter named Dolores and Margarita, the daughter of the chef at the hotel where Mike works as a lifeguard and singer; the triangle develops into a quadrilateral when it turns out that Margarita already has a boyfriend, another lifeguard named Moreno. Neither Margarita nor her father is, in fact, Mexican; they are supposed to be aristocratic refugees from some unnamed Eastern European state. Perhaps this detail was inserted to placate that section of American public opinion which refuses to believe that the gene for blonde hair can be found anywhere south of the Rio Grande, or perhaps Ursula Andress's accent was just too obviously Central European to make her credible as a Latina. We also learn that Mike was previously an acrobat in a family circus act and lost his nerve after accidentally killing his brother during a performance; part of his reason for being in Mexico is to try and regain his courage and self-respect by taking part in a cliff-diving contest.The Presley Formula did not necessarily demand great acting or great plots, and "Fun in Acapulco" has neither. Plot lines involving fratricide, even accidental fratricide, do not sit well with light-hearted musical comedy, and the ramifications of the love-quadrilateral are never really resolved. The main problem is the character of Margarita, who is blatantly two-timing Moreno with Mike but gets furiously angry whenever Mike shows any interest in Dolores. To make such a hellcat sympathetic would tax the skills of even the most gifted actress, and although Andress was one of Hollywood's hottest properties following her appearance in "Dr No" the previous year, she was far from gifted. Her obvious physical attributes are much on display here; her acting talents are kept well hidden. Her main qualification for film stardom, apart from her looks, was the fact that she was the second wife of the influential director John Derek, who was later also to make a star of his even less talented fourth wife Bo.Elvis himself is content to stroll through the movie, relying on his charm and his singing voice rather than his acting. Elsa Cárdenas as Dolores is rather better, but the actor who really stands out is young Larry Domasin as Raoul, the Mexican boy who befriends Mike and acts as his manager. (The name is spelt as "Raoul" in the cast-list, although the normal Spanish spelling would be "Raul"). I felt rather sorry for Moreno, having to put up with so much from Margarita, but Alejandro Rey plays him as the villain of the piece, an arrogant, swaggering Latino bully who is put in his place by the quieter, more modest Anglo-Saxon Mike. Ethnic stereotypes are not confined to the characterisation; local colour is provided by endless references to bullfighting, tequila, mariachi music and the desire of Mexican residents to emigrate to the USA.The music is easy on the ear and whatever one may think of Ursula's acting skills one cannot deny that she is equally easy on the eye. Besides Andress and Cardenas, the film features a third glamour girl in the shape of Teri Hope who plays a sexually precocious teenager similar to the one played by Jenny Maxwell in "Blue Hawaii", rather odd casting given that Hope was 24 at the time and had appeared as a Playboy pin-up five years earlier. (Contrary to what one reviewer thought, Teri Hope and Teri Garr are two different people). There are also some attractive travelogue-type shots of the Mexican scenery, although Elvis himself apparently never went to Acapulco; all his scenes were shot in Hollywood."Fun in Acapulco" was the top grossing movie musical of 1963, at a time when musicals were much more in vogue than they are today, so the Presley Formula was obviously a successful one in its day. It did not, however, produce any films of lasting significance, and like most of Elvis's films from the sixties, this one today has the look of a dated curiosity. 5/10

A typical Presley film that's quite enjoyable. Made a little before the King got bored with the indistinguishable material thrown at him and he gives a relaxed and likable performance here. Here he's playing a character who's trying to overcome a past trauma (an accident in a circus show which resulted in his brother's demise) by taking a job as a lifeguard at a hotel resort in Acapulco. But, with this being a Presley film, he also moonlights as a singer and has two knockout beauties wanting his full attention. The dramatic aspect here is actually quite good and what little Presley gets to show off in dramatic acting he pulls off well. Other than that; this is standard Presley fare. A few musical numbers in nightclubs, a shallow love story with the irresistible Andress, a macho rival for the girl's affections and a cute kid who befriends Elvis. Actually; the kid here (Larry Domasin) is quite funny and endearing and scenes involving the two are very good. The acting by Andress, Elsa Cardenas (as the other woman vying for Elvis's affections) and Alejandro Rey (as the fellow lifeguard and Presley's rival for Andress) is remarkably stilted. Elvis and the kid come off best. The songs here are fairly solid for Presley fans but none have become classics with the possible exception of "Bossa Nova" which is undoubtedly the highlight of this film's musical numbers. In the end; "Fun in Acapulco" is enjoyable for a Presley fan and others might just have a decent enough time. The scenery here is wonderful and you'll just wish you were there (as is the case with many Elvis films). Too bad the King hardly ever visited these great locations as he was always in studio and a body double used for the wide shots (and it's quite apparent in a few here).