MusicChat
It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.
Bea Swanson
This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Juana
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
TheLittleSongbird
Elvis Presley was a hugely influential performer with one of the most distinctive singing voices of anybody. He embarked on a film career consisting of 33 films from 1956 to 1969, films that did well at the box-office but mostly panned critically (especially his later films) and while he was a highly charismatic performer he was never considered a great actor.Some of his films, well a vast majority of the films before 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' (when his films became much less consistent), are actually pretty good and a few of them close to great. Particularly good are 'King Creole', 'Jailhouse Rock', 'Flaming Star' and 'Loving You'. 'It Happened at the World's Fair' is hardly one of Elvis' worst however, if anything it's a middling effort, patchy but decent.There are good things here in 'It Happened at the World's Fair'. The locations are colourful and beautifully shot, the archive footage is very nostalgic and is inserted well. A few of the songs are great, the big one being "One Broken Heart for Sale", with "They Remind Me Too Much of You" and "How Would You Like to Be" on the same level.Elvis is good natured and charismatic with his singing beautiful and distinctive as ever. Vicky Tiu is adorable and never gets on the wrong side of annoying, Gary Lockwood is charming and Kurt Russell makes an interesting screen debut with two of the film's best scenes.However, 'It Happened at the World's Fair' is overlong and rather slight, with a couple of subplots either needing elaboration, in need of a trim down or excision. The ending wraps everything up far too patly too. Of the songs, three of them are great while the others range from good to forgettable and vary in how well they fit, though none of them are disposable (like the worst songs in 'Blue Hawaii', 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' and Elvis' worst films).As to be expected, considering that it is rarely a strong suit in Elvis' films with a couple of exceptions ('King Creole' and 'Flaming Star') the dialogue is corny with mawkish sentimentality and humour that sometimes is fun but too often falls flat. Joan O'Brien is flavourless window dressing, and Norman Taurog's direction is routine at best.To conclude, a decent if patchy middling Elvis film. 6/10 Bethany Cox
rs114-1
I discovered this movie during some research on the original release of A Hard Day's Night 50 years ago. It Happened at the World's Fair was the second feature of a drive-in double bill with A Hard Day's Night in Wayne, Michigan in September 1964. I thought how cool is that, and I've watched it about five or six times on the Warner Archive web site.It grabs you from the very beginning with Elvis flying across the beautiful blue widescreen sky, singing Around the Bend. The scene with Yvonne Craig leaves me in cold sweats every time, and then Joan O'Brien's mature, classy beauty helps carry the rest of the movie.It's a great snapshot of a moment in time, the early 1960s, when world's fairs showed us an exciting future and there was great enthusiasm about the space program.The songs are all fairly good, and mesh in well with the plot. And it's intriguing to see Gary Lockwood in such a light-hearted role a few years before his much more serious performance in 2001: A Space Odyssey.No it's not Grand Illusion or Tokyo Story or The Battleship Potemkin, but it's a great example of Hollywood Elvis at his peak in the early 1960s.
Poseidon-3
Even at this fairly early stage in The King's film career, he was beginning the embalming process, mired down as he was in predictable, substandard, cookie-cutter musical romps with banal songs and curvy female co-stars. The spin here was that his chief co-star is an Asian ankle-biter who adores him in a different way than most. Crop-dusting pilot Presley and his ne'er-do-well partner Lockwood find themselves without two dimes to rub together and hitchhike, for no real reason, to Seattle where the World's Fair of 1962 is taking place. Their ride, apple farmer Tong, entrusts Presley with his little niece Tiu so that she can enjoy the fair. However, by the end of the day, Tong is gone and Presley has little choice but to keep the little girl as he waits for her uncle (and only relative) to return for her. Meanwhile, Presley falls for prim nurse O'Brien and Tiu does her best to encourage and enable it. However, Lockwood, who suffers from bad judgment in practically every department, allows Presley to become involved in a shady business proposition which threatens even more trouble for everyone. Presley looks pretty good and sings a plethora of songs nicely, though few of them are memorable or add anything much to the film. He does have a moderately amusing number as he's trying to canoodle with local girl Craig. O'Brien, all bouffant hair and teeth, is pretty, but rather stiff and inanimate (projecting an image that is at odds with her reportedly sultry private life!) and she shares precious little chemistry with Presley. Lockwood isn't given a lot to do except occasionally mess things up, but he's attractive and reasonably effective. Tiu, an automatic scene-stealer in her little braids and dragging along an over-sized, red, plush dog, is charming, though she comes close to overstaying her welcome after a while. In a startling development, she would grown up in real life to become First Lady of Hawaii and an active advocate for teen alcohol awareness. Russell, who would later play Elvis in a much-lauded TV-movie, has a small role as a child who comes across Presley twice at the fair. Fans of Presley enjoy watching him in practically all of his films, but the chief attraction here for most people is the chance to see some stunning footage of the 1962 World's Fair. It's hard to believe how pristine, spotless and gleaming the structures are here and how equally spiffy the people attending are. Though some sequences were recreated or otherwise augmented back at the studio, a large portion of filming took place amid the buildings and attractions in Seattle and it's a rare treat to see them as they were at the time.
blanche-2
As someone else mentioned, 1963 is still early enough that Elvis Presley looks like he's enjoying himself in "It Happened at the World's Fair," which also stars Gary Lockwood, Joan O'Brien and Vicky Tiu. Pilots Mike (Elvis) and Danny (Lockwood) find themselves without a plane after it's confiscated for debts due to Lockwood's addiction to gambling. They hitch a ride to Seattle with a man and his 7-year-old niece Sue-Lin (Tiu), and Mike ends up taking the little girl to the 1962 World's Fair. When she eats too much junk, he takes her to the clinic, where he meets Diane Warren (Joan O'Brien), a nurse. He comes on a little strong - so strong, I'm surprised she didn't call security. In order to see her again, he gives a little boy (Kurt Russell) a quarter to kick him in the shins.After he return Sue-Lin to her uncle, she finds Mike again when her uncle doesn't come home from making a delivery. Mike now has to cope with a not very helpful partner, trying to think of a way to get his plane back, romancing Diane and taking care of a 7-year-old girl.This is the usual Elvis travelogue, but more interesting than others because it's shot on the grounds of the Seattle World's Fair and has that iconic moment when future brilliant Elvis impersonator Russell lets him have it in the shins. Elvis looks great and as usual sings beautifully. The music is pretty good. This wasn't the film career Elvis wanted but unfortunately for his ambitions, these films made money. Enjoyable.
