At that point I expect campy acting, a strung together plot, a few good songs, a couple terrible songs, a fight or two, some cringe-worthy stereotypes, and a wrap up happy ending. What I get is campy acting, a strung together plot, a few good songs, a couple terrible songs, a fight or two, some cringe-worthy stereotypes, and a wrap up happy ending. Norman Taurog is nothing if not consistent…

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There is a plot, I suppose, but it hardly matters. Mike and his partner are crop dusters. Mike’s partner Danny has a gambling problem and loses their plane. That gets them hitchhiking, which gets them to meet seven year old Sue-Lin* and her uncle who give them a ride, which gets the Uncle to ask Mike the hitchhiker to take his seven year old niece to the World’s Fair for the day, which… WAIT, WHAT? “Hey man, I know I just picked you and your buddy up hitchhiking in my vegetable truck, but you seem all right. Can you take my niece for the day while I run a few errands?” Okay…

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And so of course Mike takes Sue-Lin to the fair, where she eats a bunch of junk food and gets a stomach ache. Come on, man. What kind of hitchhiker/ babysitter are you, Elvis? Well, that leads to them going to the fair nurse, the Hot Dangerous Woman Nurse Warren, and finally there’s a love interest in this movie. 

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Mike and Sue-Lin leave the fair, which is one of the weirdest scene in any of these movies yet. As they are riding away, Sue-Lin falls asleep, and Mike “think-sings” the song “They Remind Me Too Much Of You.” As in, it’s playing, but he’s not lip syncing it. Instead, he’s looking wistfully into the distance, thinking it. Or maybe they’re listening to an Elvis song on the radio. It’s not clear.

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So now the problem is, Nurse Warren isn’t interested, so Mike has to hatch a plan to get back to see her. He does what anyone (in a Norman Taurog directed movie) would do. He gives a young Kurt Russell** a quarter to kick him in the shins so he has an excuse to go back to see the nurse. He takes the opportunity to lie to her a bunch about getting injured and suing the fair and then gets her to go on a date, and she finds out he lied and… I guess there is a lot of plot in this story.

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Anyway, there’s hijinx and shinannigans along the way. Danny keeps betting, and Nurse Warren keeps spurning and somewhere Sue-Lin finds Mike as she’s wandering around Seattle after her uncle goes missing and WAIT, WHAT? Where is Child Protective Services in this movie?

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Well, they show up later, but not before Sue-Lin fakes being sick to get Mike and Nurse Warren together. All that’s left is for Danny to make a bad deal with a mob guy to get their plane back, and for Mike to show up in time to kick the guy’s ass in a stupidly sped up fight scene.

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Musically it’s a mixed bag. Like Girls! Girls! Girls! there are several songs where Elvis sings to a little girl. They range from fair ("How Would You Like to Be”) to bad ("Cotton Candy Land”), although none reach the atrocity level of “Earth Boy.” Aside from the great closer “Happy Ending,” all of the good stuff happens early, most notably “Relax.” Sadly “Relax” happens in a horrible, pointless scene. It’s just Mike calling a girl when he gets to Seattle and being a super grabby douche while singing and trying to make out with her. It doesn’t have any point but to make Mike unlikable so he can spend the rest of the movie trying to convince us and Nurse Warren that he’s not. She ends up convinced. Me, not so much.

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ACTING: 4 Elvises 

MUSICAL PERFORMANCES: 7 Elvises

BEST SONG: “Relax”

STUNTS: Simulated piloting, child endangerment, mob guy punching with sped up film, running through screen door

CRINGE FACTOR: Grabby date scene, Chinese stereotypes, hitch hiker babysitting kid at fair for the day

KISSIN’: Not much. 

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*Sue-Lin looks a lot like one of the little neighbor girls in Girls! Girls! Girls!  So I was like “Am I just being racist?” and I looked it up. It’s not the same girl, but the sister of the Girls! Girls! Girls! girls, who were part of the Tiu sisters, a performing group of some fame in the 1960s. Vicky Tiu (Sue-Lin) was recently the first lady of Hawaii from 1997-2002.

**Yes, that Kurt Russell. He has the best line in the movie. “Adults! They’re all nuts!”