Wonderful character development!

A Disappointing Continuation

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Girl Happy is a nice little movie starring Elvis Presley as Rusty Wells, a nightclub singer hired by Big Frank, a mobster, to watch his daughter, Valerie, who is played by Shelley Fabares.The movie is nothing special, a usual Elvis Presley movie that is supposed to give us an hour and a half of fun. The movie features a nice soundtrack with Elvis Presley as the lead singer, and if you listen carefully to the soundtrack and follow along with the movie, the soundtrack carries the plot of the film. The movie has its moments and one funny moment in the movie was a part where Rusty is trying to romance a girl even though he is in a romance with Valerie, and he has to keep Valerie out of his motel room well he is romancing this girl.I rated this the same as Jailhouse Rock, which is another Elvis movie that is perhaps more well-known than this one. I liked the soundtrack of this movie because I felt the songs were well-written and carried the plot of the movie. However unlike Jailhouse Rock, this movie did not require any acting. Any three guys around Elvis' age could have played the parts of Rusty's friends.Girl Happy is a nice movie featuring silly situations and a good soundtrack. It is nothing special by any means, but manages to deliver an hour and a half of quality entertainment. This movie is highly recommended for any Elvis Presley fan.

This fun 1965 movie starring Elvis Presley and Shelley Fabares should be put in a time capsule for a movie representing the carefree mid-1960's in America. Kids were still fairly innocent, the Vietnam War hadn't jaded the country and the drugs that pervaded the late 1960's weren't as prevalent the time this movie was made.Elvis plays Rusty Wells, a musician hired by a mobster Big Frank (Harold Stone) to guard his daughter Valerie (the lovely Miss Fabares) who has gone with some girlfriends to Ft. Lauderdale on Spring break. Valerie doesn't know her overprotective father has hired Rusty and his group of rag tag musicians to watch her, and of course, she and Elvis fall in love.The movie is similar in some ways to "Where the Boys Are", but is not as serious. Of course, with it being an Elvis picture, we have to have the Pelvis sing in several cheesy but fun song and dance numbers. The songs "Girl Happy" and "Do the Clam" are classic cornball songs, but fun to watch. This movie was one of my favorites from my childhood and it is amazing to me how I can still remember the lyrics to these songs after all these years! Elvis never was a great actor, and over the years his movie roles kept getting sillier and sillier, but this movie, silly as parts of it are, is still a lot of fun to watch. And boy was Elvis hot when he was young!

Another Elvis Presley movie, another cringe-inducing title: predictably, as trivial as can be but, surprisingly enough, quite a fun, comedic vehicle with Elvis and his band assigned to chaperone a gangster's teenage daughter at a holiday camp. Shelley Fabares is among Presley's cutest female leads (she would co-star with him twice more in just as many years) and at times reminded me of Martha Vickers's thumbsucking Carmen Sternwood in Howard Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP (1946)! Of course, the couple's eventual romance is complicated as much by the easily misunderstood situation as by their being needlessly involved with other partners.Familiar character actor Harold J. Stone, usually noted for drama, is the gangster but, while he plays it mostly straight, isn't exactly menacing either; the songs are a cut above-average, though "Do The Clam" – a would-be instant 'beach blanket' hit – is a definite low point! Former child star Jackie Coogan – of Charles Chaplin's THE KID (1921) fame and who was then undergoing a brief career renaissance as the lunatic Uncle Fester in the cult TV series, THE ADDAMS FAMILY – appears here as a flustered cop but his participation is, alas, an undistinguished one.Amazingly, I recently learned – through a newspaper article written by a friend of my father's who happens to be the No. 1 Elvis fan I know and who was also the one to introduce me to home video technology back in 1985! – that GIRL HAPPY was banned in Malta on original release (most probably due to a 'hot' striptease act the boys witness more than once during their runarounds after a tipsy Fabares)!!

Although most of Elvis' movies were set in a world of total happiness and joy they were very good and were especially good when someone is feeling low. Girl Happy has some great songs and it also had a very successful sound-track. The main theme in this film is that a gangster hires a singer ( Elvis ) to look after his daughter on a holiday camp.