You won't be disappointed!

Fantastic!

Captivating movie !

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

O.K. He didn't know Mary-Tyler-Moore was a nun (Sister Michelle) at the time. Elvis plays a doctor from Tennessee trying to bring health-care, love and peace to The Ghetto in NYC. The plausible premise here is that 3 "undercover" nuns try to perform heroically as "social-workers". Only the old priest (Regis Toomey), who disproves, knows about it at the in Parish level. "Flapper skirts on a Bride of Christ" (Who talks like that?) he exclaims. Exaggerated but somewhat true-to-the-times in 1960. Black and White rhetoric and stereotypes abound. "You are either part of the problem or part of the solution" still rings true. Really "tame" by today's media standards. What also rings true: street gangs with delinquent boys and girls, drugs, rape and bullets, street violence. Loan sharks and small-time gangsters. Gang fights and murders are only "hinted at" when discussing "The Festival". Has nothing changed in 45 years? What's good and bad about the film? "Julio", the mentally ill stuttering Hispanic "youth" with a sexual fetish about sharp things and rape is a very-disturbing character. When Julio attacks Mary, Elvis comes to her rescue, with Karate and Judo moves. "Rage reduction" is obsolete and very disturbing as autistic therapy. The repeated phrasing is accurate, as some afflicted tend to repeat phrases to communicate. It's disturbing when the little girl repeats the "N" (Racist) word after she hears it. That word is inappropriate for this type of film and even this website would not allow me to use it. Three very likable songs (4 of you count the title song) including "Rubberneckin'". A lot of humorous "banter". Ed Asner adds to the film as the young politically-correct cop-on the-beat. By the way, we used to eat a noodle casserole. It was not called noodle "ring" but it was baked. Today, we call it "Tuna Helper". Elvis closes the movie with an upbeat "rock and roll" song that praises The Lord. As "The Snoop Sisters" both comment: "There was a time when you could go to (Mass at this) church and not think about a blessed thing". It's tired-old-Elvis' last film, and I did not know that it was theatrically released! I first saw it on NBC. Both Elvis and Mary Tyler Moore rise above a very uneven and troubled script, and seem to be enjoying each others company. Worth your time if you are big fans of Mary and Elvis. Some critics read too much into it, and considered Elvis'character "John Carpenter" to be an allegory or parable for "Jesus Christ" and "Mary Magdalene". (I don't buy it.) Strangely hypnotic due to it's two charismatic stars. Elvis flirts with everybody!

I did not know what I was getting into when I started watching this one. I will cut it some slack for being a product of the movie model of the 60s. I can't say that I hated it, but I can't say that it is a good movie. It was impactful on me and I am glad I watched. Though it is not a serious movie, it deserves to be studied in sociology and psychiatry courses, though not necessarily taken seriously, more considered the expression of some crazy ideas of the time. as the film does try to put some social messages out there, and how it deals with issues is unique(humorous) to say the least. First, the basics: Elvis was miscast in this one, and it was impossible to take him seriously, and it hurt the movie, and the whole role and whole idea that one would cast Elvis in this role seems very odd. I felt like a much more attractive(sexy) Sister Barbara(Jane Elliot) should have been the love interest. The clothes that Elvis wore and the way he strutted down the street several times was odd. Some of the lines, like "the last two nurses were raped, and one of them against her will.." interesting, amusing, priceless. lol All angles of a Hollywood version of a slum were covered in kooky fashion; black panthers, mafia overlord, corrupt police(only mentioned), drugs(heroin, referred to as "h"), rape, theft, racism, what am I forgetting? lol I thought it was odd that Dr. Carpenter was a bit of a wolf with his new nurse, as it cast him as a bit of a out-of-character villain. I think it would have been much more effective if his affectionate overtones toward her had been more subtle, if not professionally appropriate. lol I couldn't understand why the three nuns were so disgusted with their accommodations. It didn't look so bad to me and it revealed them to be weak. lol Now the more interesting stuff: Every patient has a different problem, and all are solved by our illustrious doctor. Just preposterous! and pushes forward the notion that our medical establishment wields such scientific and indisputable power that it solves all our problems, and we would have to be fools not to avail ourselves of their wisdom. Poppycock! Additionally, all our problems are treatable and understood by them. More poppycock! The Mary Tyler Moore character is going to treat an autistic kid with "patience", as if that will help, and he, a ghetto doctor, is going to unleash the latest experimental methods to treat autism, yikes! And the child, after enduring this ridiculous "restrain-ment torture", and being told endlessly by strangers that they "love her", wow! What a train wreck, I really couldn't turn away, and my wife couldn't look! lol And the implication that the autism is a choice on the little girl's part. Laughable and dangerous! Julio and his stuttering. Too much. And the implication on our Doctor's part that to improve Julio's speech would help improve his confidence, and that would likely unleash the real demons inside(my interpretation), wow! And then the doctor saves Mary from Julios' attempted rape. Good heavens! lol And the only police officer we get to meet(Ed Asner) is some kind of social professor? lol And towards the end, Mary Tyler Moore quotes Sr. Barbara who just made a social and intellectual statement, and Mary asks: "Is she a communist?" What, are smart, socially aware people to be labeled and derided? I guess so when everyone else is a moron. lol And our Doctor sends his new nurse out to make house calls, and has no idea of her capabilities? Seems senseless and wreckless, especially considering that he showed no faith in them. lol Final thought-In the middle of this ghetto and horrid existence, they take a break on the weekend to cast off their woes and play football in the park. It is apparently a special time when the world is magical, all get along, poverty is to be forgotten, until Monday. lol Elvis and Mary take the girl Amanda, cured now, on a carousel, and sing about a "sunshine place", I believe, and she is to smile. It was like a drug induced dream, kinda creepy, and it seemed to me that the girl was the only one still in reality, and it was "they" would who were dragging her into their unrealistic, unsustainable, fantasy world of smiles and horrible creepy song. lol The girl was not broken, they are. No wonder she is shutting the world out! lol

I watched CHANGE OF HABIT for the first time on January 8th to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Elvis Presley's birth. It's quite a change of pace for the star, an attempt to mix social commentary with an Elvis musical. It doesn't quite work, largely because the script and the direction, products of the old Hollywood studio mindset, clash with the young performers and the ideas in the story that were clearly in sync with the tenor of the times. Had they gotten a younger, more innovative director, it might have worked. But that can be said about so many of Elvis's movies.The basic premise is sound. The three nuns in the film played by Mary Tyler Moore, Jane Elliot, and Barbara McNair have clearly defined professional skills and a strong commitment to using them to help the disadvantaged. The women are unquestionably sincere and quite admirable and courageous. Their characters provide the emotional core for the story of a free clinic operating in a multi-ethnic ghetto neighborhood. From a production standpoint, the casting direction and some of the background work offer an authenticity quite rare in a studio product of the time. Despite being shot largely on the Universal Studio backlot (the New York street set), the street life portrayed has a rhythm and level of noise and aggression that wasn't often convincingly captured in studio productions. There are a large number of black and Latino performers in the cast and not a single one of them looks like they stepped out of Central Casting. A cute Puerto Rican actress, Laura Figueroa, plays a 17-year-old street girl who has the hots for Elvis. One of the black militants who confronts Barbara McNair's Sister Irene is played by Ji-Tu Cumbuka, who went on to quite a number of important roles in black-themed films and TV shows (e.g. UP TIGHT, TOP OF THE HEAP, "Roots"). There's even a street fair with a Latin band that resembles events I used to attend in the South Bronx back in the day.The one significant false note in the casting is the inclusion of two stock old white lady characters (played by Doro Merande and Ruth McDevitt) who stick their heads out of the windows regularly to cluck their disapproval, as if they'd been held over from the Frank Capra road company. Hollywood veteran Regis Toomey (who was actually in a Capra movie, MEET JOHN DOE) is on hand as a grumpy old parish priest who antagonizes the nuns, but, to its credit, the film refuses to soften the character or make him one of those stock Irish priests with a kind word and a useful homily for every situation. Instead, he's presented as a man fearful of his parishioners and clearly out of step with the times. In another interesting casting touch, Ed Asner turns up as an enlightened beat cop who speaks Spanish to the street's residents. Cult favorite Timothy Carey (THE KILLING) plays a surly butcher who regularly cheats the customers.There are some alarming elements on display, though. In one scene the doctor played by Elvis takes a young autistic girl of about five or six into his arms and manhandles her in a bout of "tough love," urging her to get her "anger" out. To a modern viewer it looks an awful lot like child abuse. (As another comment here points out, this was an attempt to dramatize a now-discredited treatment method called "rage reduction therapy.") At one point, Elvis tries to dissuade the nuns from working in his clinic with a jaw-dropping line that has to be heard to be disbelieved: "The last three nurses who worked here couldn't take it. Two of them were raped, one even against her will." Later, an attempted rape of one of the nuns at knifepoint by a disturbed patient is brushed off quite casually. Maybe they assumed it wasn't "against her will." Also, this has to be the only Elvis film where you hear the words, "faggot," "bitch" and "nigger." (And it was rated "G," to boot!)While Mary Tyler Moore does an excellent job as Sister Michelle, who is torn between her love for Jesus and her love for Elvis, I can't be so generous in assessing Elvis' performance. He's quite charismatic, despite the inappropriate hairstyle and wardrobe, but he holds back in every scene. With a better script and direction, the role of an embittered Vietnam veteran who carries out his moral obligation to a dead soldier by becoming a doctor to help the poor could have been a breakout performance for the singing star. Instead, Elvis comes in, reads his lines with a minimum of involvement and refuses to express the emotions that the character must surely be feeling. What happened? Why didn't he step up to the plate and knock this one out of the park? He had it in him. Instead, this was his last acting job. All I see now is sad, wasted potential. It hurts.

This is the last of Elvis' movies and at least I can give him some credit for trying something different as well as decent acting on his part. However, other than that, this is a pretty dumb movie that is fun to watch because of its camp value. Most of the problem is the casting, the rest has to do with trying to make the film timely and "with it", as this movie is tragically un-hip! Mary Tyler Moore stars, of all things, as a nun! She and two other "cool" nuns enter the "hood" to help nice Dr. Elvis with his free clinic. The catch is that they are incognito and no one there knows they are already spoken for, so to speak. Naturally, good Dr. Elvis and sweet Sister Moore are taken with each other and sparks begin to fly...until Elvis discovers the truth AND Moore needs to decide whether or not to remain marry the king of the universe or the king or rock and roll.Along the way, there are lots and lots of subplots--most of which are amazingly silly. One that COULD have been interesting involves a little girl with autism. Unfortunately, just about everything about how they treat her and why she is afflicted is wrong, as they claim the autism is caused by early childhood abandonment(!) and that to cure it they need to use something akin to "compression therapy". In other words, the doctor and nurse hold the autistic kid and force her to accept their love--thereby effecting a miracle cure! Using this same illogic, such "treatments" could also make blind kids see and possibly effect world peace!! Sadly, this misinformation probably did a lot of harm to those who watched the film and had no idea it was all mumbo-jumbo.Additional plot elements involve two old prudes who inexplicably hate the nuns, a priest with all the charm of Idi Amin, a gangster and his thugs, a nun who decides to give it all up to become a political agitator and a guy with a speech impediment who is a rapist who just needs a bit of understanding! Because practically every imaginable social ill is thrown into the film "kitchen sink style" and the answers seem so pat, viewers can't help but laugh at the whole thing--as well as the idea of Mary Tyler Moore as a nun OR her falling in love with Dr. Elvis--who has a practice in the ghetto! Talk about incongruous plot elements!! The net effect of all this dropped within an incredibly sterilized "hood" is truly funny when seen today--despite the producers best efforts to make a film that said something about social ills. However, for bad movie fans, this film is a must, as it provides many unintended laughs.You know an Elvis Presley movie is bad when his acting is the best thing about the film!!!By the way, there are two interesting elements about the film I didn't yet mention. First, Ed Asner makes an appearance late in the film and it's neat to see him and Moore together a year before they appeared together on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. Second, the film has a very vague ending and this wasn't a bad thing, as it allowed the audience members to wonder how it would all work out--though I am sure some were disappointed by the lack of a clear resolution.