ELVIS: KID GALAHAD!(1962):
For a more serious movie, this isn't bad really! I
had my reservations about this. It turned out
much better than I expected, with enough
lightness to make it entertaining! It hasn't a
lot of outstanding music, just enough to keep
it light! Charles Bronson plays Elvis' fight trainer,
and he turns in one of his best acting performances
that I've seen!
Some of the better songs include Home Is Where
The Heart Is, I Got Lucky, King Of The Whole Wide
World, This Is Living and I'm Riding The Rainbow! B
From another reviewer at Amazon:
Elvis Presley tries on boxing gloves for Kid Galahad,
one of his post-Army pictures that still has some
fresh air and innocence in it. First spotted crooning
from the back of a pickup truck, Elvis plays an ex-G.I.
newly returned to his foresty birthplace, where
shifty Gig Young runs a boxing camp. Naturally
the kid turns out to have talent with the gloves,
and a gamblers/mobsters/boxing formula soon
kicks in. Meanwhile, Elvis turns his attention to
Joan Blackman (from Blue Hawaii) and Young
resists making an honest woman of girlfriend
Lola Albright. Charles Bronson, who didn't get
on well with Elvis, has a hefty role as an
incorruptible trainer. The songs squeezed in
around this are humdrum, and even the best
ones can't accurately be described as rock &
roll. Director Phil Karlson, a dab hand at action
films (The Phenix City Story), gets some
savagery into the fight scenes, and the early
location work has a nice breezy feel. As for
Presley himself, the early signs of stupor are
beginning to be apparent; after the enjoyable
opening reel he lacks the old spirit, looking
understandably unengaged by the material
or his co-stars. --Robert Horton