Change of Habit

1969

G

Excluding last week’s film review, this will be my 7th Elvis Movie Reviews. These are only going to be the movies that he played a certain role in. When I started reviewing his movies I wanted to do all of them, but I have gotten behind. This is the first one that I’ve reviewed in 20 months. It seriously doesn’t feel that long ago, but since the new biopic is coming out soon, I wanted to get another one out of the way. This particular movie was Elvis’s 31st and last feature film. I have seen it before, but it has been like 2 or 3 years since I’ve seen it prior to watching it recently. I decided to give it another go, so here’s what I thought of it.

Three nuns named Michelle (Mary Tyler Moore), Irene (Barbara McNair) and Barbara (Jane Elliot) embark on a journey to blend in with regular folks in an inner city and become a nurse for the local Dr. John Carpenter’s (Elvis Presley) practice. In an attempt to win people to the Catholic Church their mission is to blend and act as if they’re regular people. The streets are filled with crime and a lot of shady things, but the nuns must remain strong in their beliefs. In the process, the doctor and Michelle start to have feelings for each other, but in a vow of secrecy, she must not reveal she’s a nun. Irene and Barbara each have their own battles as well. Irene is called out for conforming to white society as a black woman and Barbara is fighting for injustice among the Latin community at the local market store.

Throughout the film, they all must aid patients in their health needs and be servants to the community, but the community makes things difficult for them. In the midst of burglary, sexual harassment, and drug peddling, they do their best to make the neighborhood a better place to live all the while trying to maintain their secret identities. After the local priest feels like the nuns have conformed too much, they are forced to wear their habits in public, thus revealing themselves as nuns. While John thought Michelle had another man in her life, he finds out that she is forbidden to marry. In the end, everyone is left with difficult decisions to make and while Barbara and Irene were at peace with the decisions they’ve made, Michelle and John remained at a standstill in their relationship.

It was a pretty simple plotline and it was executed fine. As I have done a little research on this film after watching it. It’s funny to me that that one of the actress’s real name was Barbara, but she wasn’t the one to have the character’s name. I think it would have made things a little easier for the actors, but what do I know? This was Elvis’s last actual film that he played a role in and I thought he did a fantastic job here. You can tell that he would have thrived in a somewhat serious role as this did touch on some real issues in this one, but this film wasn’t exactly Oscar-worthy. He played the role of a cool, calm and collected doctor in the ghetto and it was surprisingly a perfect fit for him. Shocking, I know. Mary Tyler Moore was the other top billing in the film and I really enjoy the stuff that she was in. I love watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Tyler Moore Show and obviously she had big roles in both of them. So with that being said, she was one of the biggest actresses during that time. Those were her two biggest claims to fame and she had roles in other TV shows, but she really didn't to a lot of acting in movies. This film was in between the two shows I just named. I thought Barbara McNair and Jane Elliot did great jobs in their role as the other two nuns and I hate to put it that way, but that’s kind of the way the film interpreted it. Elliot is most known for her time on the long-running soap opera, General Hospital. She has been on the show since 1978 and is still on it to this day. A pretty incredible run I would say. McNair had a few movie and sporadic TV roles and was pretty famous for her music at the time, but this was possibly her biggest role. While there were other characters in the film that were recognized, those had the biggest roles. Ed Asner made a couple appearances as the town’s police Lieutenant in the film. Other than that, there weren’t any notable characters to discuss.

I mentioned that I saw this film before watching it again this week, so I knew what to expect, but this film is extremely dated, and I think I will run into that a lot when I dive deeper into Elvis’s movies. It’s not so dated that it is unwatchable, but things are so much different now. When it comes to treating people medically for one. Michelle and John were treating an autistic girl and their methods seemed a little odd to me, but I’m pretty ignorant on medical methodology, so I’m not going to dive too far into it. I don’t know if this is completely accurate, but I’ve seen that this is the earliest portrayal of an autistic character in movie history which I think is pretty neat and pretty remarkable in itself. There was also a young man with a stuttering issue that was openly abused by his father in public, so there was that. Also, this was a G-rated movie. I’d like to know what an R-rating would constitute in 1969 if this is a G-rating. While there wasn’t a lot gore, there were some intense situations. There was an attempted rape where the victim was held at knifepoint. This wasn’t insinuated, it was pretty explicit. How was it a G-rated movie? Sure, there was very little swearing, but there were a few racially insensitive words mentioned in the film among other things. It is surprising to see how this was thought of as a G-rated movie.

I thought the movie was just ok, nothing special, but not bad. It showed what Elvis could’ve potentially done in a serious acting role and this was really as close as he got to it sadly. Elvis had some pretty catchy songs in this movie and before watching it, I knew most of them already. This movie isn't going to be for everyone and knowing that could save a lot of headache, but I definitely think it’s worth watching if you’re an Elvis fan. I liked it well enough to watch it more than once, so that should mean something, right?

GRADE: 3.3/5

Other Reviewed Elvis Films (ranked in order of my personal favorites)

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