It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
... View MoreIt was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
... View MoreIt's an amazing and heartbreaking story.
... View MoreIt's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
... View MoreIn his career Elvis Presley did three Hawaiian based films for which he got a nice Hawaiian vacation to shoot there. But for Double Trouble which is European based, the King never left the MGM lot for this film. All the scenes in London, Brussels, Antwerp, and Stockholm were strictly second unit establishing stuff. He must have thought he was gypped.And Double Trouble is not as good as either Paradise Hawaiian Style or Blue Hawaii, the latter one Elvis's very best. And he's not playing or courting twins either. Instead he's a pop singer on tour in Europe who gets mixed up with a pair of women. One is Yvonne Romain a worldly, but deadly sophisticate the other is a teen just days shy of seventeen played by Annette Day.For reasons it takes the whole film to figure out why people keep trying to kill Presley. In fact this plot is quite serious as young Annette Day is in danger and Presley by his association with her. But this is an Elvis film so songs and comedy are added. I would say rather shoehorned in to fit the kind of films Presley was making. It's entertaining, but muddled.As always, Colonel Tom Parker made sure that Elvis was surrounded with veteran film names and established character players. Chips Rafferty and Norman Rossington play an inept pair of smugglers and con men who slip a fortune in jewels into his luggage and spend the entire film trying one loony scheme after another to recover them. John Williams is Day's uncle and guardian, Leon Askin is a Swedish police lieutenant with the Wiere Brothers as his assistants.Note the hair stylings of the musicians backing Presley up in his act. If that wasn't a salute to the British invasion and an attempt to steal a few Beatles fans, I don't what else you could call it.Not one of the King's best
... View MoreHear Elvis say "bikkies" (a kick for me, as one who grew up with that contraction of "biscuits," in America known as cookies), see Elvis lay his kenpo down on a bad guy who dies as a result, see Elvis drive a VW bug, witness Elvis smash windows, marvel at Elvis in a mustache and glasses mask, and watch him beat up a beautiful woman! Those are some of the highlights, anyway. In truth, this film is among my very least favorite of Elvis films, even judging by the somewhat unique standards of the '60s travelogue Technicolor musicals that became the standard by 1962. The formula had worn thin by 1965 ("Frankie And Johnnie," "Harum Scarum," "Paradise, Hawaiian Style"), to say the least, and -- other than some bright points in "Spinout" and the entirety of "Easy Come, Easy Go" (like "Double Trouble," shot in 1966...for some reason, I like that crazy film) -- nothing got better, in my opinion, until the formula changed radically with 1968's "Stay Away, Joe" and "Live A Little, Love A Little." The period 1965-1967 was Elvis' nadir, in other words, though the May, 1966 Nashville sessions (that yielded the immaculate "How Great Thou Art" gospel album and a few stellar secular songs, including a definitive take on one of Bob Dylan's songs) and recently-surfaced home recordings from that period show all too well how phenomenal Elvis' talent was at the time, a contrast that would anger and frustrate anyone who cared about his place in American and world culture and history. But we have what we have, and the criminal waste of talent that to a great extent represented Elvis' film career during this time is undeniable but shouldn't necessarily result in us writing off the results out of hand for that reason alone. There are a few moments in this film that are good, and a few when Elvis seems to actually be engaged rather than bored with the whole proceedings and just sleepwalking through it to fulfill contractual obligations. There're some great actors in supporting roles, too, like Leon Askin (General Burkhalter!), Chips Rafferty, John Williams, Norman Rossington (the only actor to appear in films with the Beatles and Elvis), and Michael Murphy. Annette Day is kind of lackluster in the lead female role. Yvonne Romain is much more like it. And the Wiere Brothers have always irritated the hell out of me in this film -- wish they were not in it, because they really stupid things up.The songs are not the greatest even compared to other songs from Elvis movies of this time, but I do like the title track, "Long Legged Girl" (a tasty song, actually, written by Joy Byers, who usually contributed great songs even to otherwise not-so-great movies, such as "Let Yourself Go" in "Speedway"), and the jazzy "City By Night." "Could I Fall In Love" is a nice ballad, a duet of Elvis with Elvis, but the entire June, 1966 session for this movie suffered from sonic problems and I believe it's one that Elvis complained vociferously about. I also believe that Elvis walked out on recording "Old McDonald" before he'd produced an acceptable master take, being totally disgusted by the task, and the master was spliced from what the engineers had captured. Not his greatest recorded moment, anyway. And, darn it, it (and the rest of the soundtrack) was recorded on my second birthday.IMDb mixes up the screen character credits for Chips Rafferty and Norman Rossington but, to be fair, so does the end title sequence in the film. Oops.
... View MoreElvis Presley plays pop singer Guy Lambert who is touring England where he becomes involved with Jill Conway (Annette Day), a teenage heiress with a crush on him. It also becomes clear that her uncle Gerald Waverley (John Williams) is trying to kill her in order to get his hands on her money and Lambert must save her life.Often slated because in real life Elvis never toured yet alone visited England, and the film was shot on one of those cheesy but likable MGM sets built in America to stand in for England rather like those used in a Man From UNCLE adventure. Hardly surprising since the art directors are George W. Davis and Merrill Pye who worked on some of those films. Those who have seen One Of Our Spies Is Missing for example will know what I mean. For me, this is one of the King's more enjoyable movies with a reasonable storyline for Presley's usual standards and he sings "Long Legged Woman With The Short Dress On", one of my favourite tunes which is proving VERY hard to find on CD. The film also features Norman Rossington (the only actor to appear with both The Beatles and Elvis) as a hapless diamond smuggler. John Williams is well cast as the smooth and scheming Gerald Waverley. The only downside is the fact that Elvis who is without doubt one of the most important figures in the development of popular music has to sing OLD MACDONALD. But fast forward past that bit and the rest of the film isn't at all bad.
... View MoreAmusing Elvis fare, in which E is stuck protecting a wealthy heiress (Day) from her greedy uncle (Williams) who wants her killed before her 18th birthday so it won't be discovered that he's been stealing from her inheritance. Of course, this same date also explains why Elvis is reluctant to hook up with the petite Brit, and enables the evil uncle to send bumbling Belgian cops on E's trail for kidnapping. Also, groupie Romain turns out to be after more than E's autograph -- she's in the employ of the uncle too! Elvis sings some pretty good songs, some pretty bad songs, and gets involved in some funny situations. He even kills a guy in a fight (well, actually, he does that in a lot of his movies). Did frozen funds inspire this Anglicization of Presley? hmmmmm......
... View More