I couldn’t help noticing your…everything.

FUN IN ACAPULCO is quaint, even for an Elvis Presley escapade, and its title mocks hollow: in 2025, the once desired fun spot was ranked the 2nd most violent city…on Earth. Less tragic, ranking The King’s movies for their serial lameness would find serious competition from a good dozen of his 31 feature films released between 1956 and 1969 (we don’t count the two concert documentaries) but this terribly written, lazily acted 1963 snore is right down there. We’ll get to its partially redeeming elements a few paragraphs later.

Ay -ay-ay-OY!, already

Acapulco, Mexico. Unfairly fired from his job on a yacht, Amerihunk ‘Mike Windgren’ (Elvis, 28) gets hired at a resort hotel, splitting gigs as pool lifeguard during the day, lounge singer in the evening. A former circus acrobat who now has a fear of heights, he’s taunted by chief lifeguard ‘Moreno’ (Alejandro Rey,33), renowned for his daring high dives, 136 feet off the city’s famous La Quebrada cliffs. The macho hombre’s jealous that Mike’s drawn the attention of bombshell co-worker ‘Margarita Dauphin’ (Ursula Andress, 27). Mike’s interested in her (well, duh) but he’s also hotly pursued by  local celebrity ‘Dolores Gomez ‘ (Elsa Cárdenas, 30), a mucha-flirty lady bullfighter. Will Mike’s fear of heights meet the supreme test at La Quebrada? Will the right foxes end up with the right hound dogs? Will ten songs break up the blather and will one of them at least be reasonably cool? And—is it worth 97 minutes to find out?

Directed with proficient indifference by Richard Thorpe, the puerile script was written (on cocktail napkins or toilet paper?) by Allen Weiss, who also bore responsibility for Blue Hawaii, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Roustabout, Paradise Hawaiian Style and Easy Come Easy Go, making you wonder if Elvis grew to hate him. Presley gamely syncs thru eleven songs, several obviously Mexico-related, a couple about bullfighting, and with “Guadalajara” thrown in for the gringos-don’t-know heckuvit: that vital metropolis lying 375 miles from Acapulco. Also in the cast are Paul Lukas, 68, playing Ursula’s father, a Count reduced to a chef: a long drop in status from winning 1943’s Oscar for Best Actor in Watch On The Rhine. He’s of course a pro, which can’t be said for seven-year-old Larry Domasin, as ‘Raoul’, the ‘charming’ urchin who helps and pesters Elvis and whose “aw, but he’s so cute” factor wears off after he mangles his first sentences. The mostly synthetic look of the film is due to the inconvenience that Mexico had 86’d Presley for supposedly making insulting remarks about the country. That turned out to be a sham and a shame, a slur invented by a gossip columnist doing dirty revenge work for a politician who was pissed when Elvis didn’t appear at a birthday party for the man’s daughter (it was never agreed upon in the first place). That meant that all of Presley’s footage was done on back lots in Hollywood, with doubles used for long shots in the 2nd-unit footage shot in Acapulco. Apart from some of the singing, Presley’s performance is less than thrilling, Cardenas’ delivery of English is awkward and Variety, in its review of Andress, said nothing other than that she was “a fine-looking specimen.” Hard to contest, but, still, ouch. In spite of its deficiencies, Elvis fans trooped forth in enough numbers to bring it to 35th place at the box office, grossing $8,000,000.

Resisting the seize & spank impulse shared by audience

After all the piling on—it’s not an atrocious movie or anything to get riled over, just such a trivial snoozer—Fun does have a few things in its favor. First off, it’s worthwhile for the background shots of Acapulco, from way back when it was not just a lovely location but a safe and happy one. Second, also visual and vintage, is the appeal from the presence of Ursula Andress, in her first movie after sensationally walking out of the Caribbean in Dr. No. Last, while the tunes are a motley crew, you do get the jazzy “Bossa Nova Baby”, complete with signature Elvian gyration; it became a chart hit. *

Dude is so cool he can wear black clothes and have his sleeves down while on a scorching Mexican beach at high noon

With Robert Carricart, Teri Hope (24, a Playboy Playmate, as the snotty blonde p-tease teen brat who gets Elvis fired and kicks off the plot), Richard Reeves, Red West and Teri Garr, 18, making her uncredited debut, dancing somewhere in the background.

* Ursula: “I adored Elvis. He was the kindest man there was. At the beginning, I was not fond of him. You know, you judge people by what you read about them. But Elvis was adorable, so sweet, nice, and kind. We continued to be friends, and I saw him once or twice a year.”

Bad move, Elsa

Elsa Cárdenas was first seen in the 1956 sleeper The Brave One, which won her a role in Giant. Her sizable part in the Elvis flick may not be her real film fame claim. Disciples of The Wild Bunch know her as the treacherous harlot who shot William Holden in the back—and immediately regretted it.

Whether this is more daunting revisit than Presley’s other ’63 toss-off, It Happened At The World’s Fair may depend on nostalgic fondness for the scenery (JFK days Seattle in the sunshine vs. Acapulco, pre-broad daylight kidnappings and nightly pitched gun-battles) or one’s concerns over navigating co-starred curves (Joan O’Brien and Yvonne Craig vs. Ursula Andress and Elsa Cárdenas). It is a ponder situation, still unresolved well into the next century.

“It’s good to be The King!”—–M. Brooks, A.D. 1981