Heartbreak Hotel (film)

Plot

The film opens with a single mother and her two children, and a teenage son and nine-year-old daughter, running a boarding house. The mother is hurt in a car accident, after her drunkard boyfriend crashed, and he kidnaps her favorite singer, Elvis Presley, for her birthday, getting the owner of a local pizzeria who looks eerily like Elvis' mother to pose as his mother's ghost as a distraction. Elvis awakens, after being drugged by the boy, in the boarding house. He and the boy do not get along at first. The boy disrespects for the 70's Elvis saying that he sold out to Vegas. However, the boy and Elvis get to know each other, and they became friends. Elvis even plays "Heartbreak Hotel" with the boy's band at a talent show.

Cast

Reception

The film received mixed-to-negative reviews. It currently holds a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 13 reviews; it was also a box office failure.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated that "Mr. Columbus, who previously directed Adventures in Baby-Sitting and whose writing credits include Gremlins and The Goonies, sets up this idea well but has no idea where to stop. He pushes the film's slender premise much too far, trying to work miraculous feats of self-improvement upon Johnny, his mother, Marie, and even Elvis himself."

The Washington Post's Rita Kempley wrote, "With such fruity writing, what do overacting and miscasting (Jay Leno would have been perfect) matter? Playing Elvis is like playing a Kennedy, nearly impossible. And Keith, as we know, had mighty big pants to fill. Face it. The King has left the building, gone to that Caesars Palace in the sky. Columbus, say goodbye."

A one-star review came from Roger Ebert who wrote, "Here it is, the goofiest movie of the year, a movie so bad in so many different and endearing ways that I’m damned if I don’t feel genuine affection for it. We all know it’s bad manners to talk during a movie, but every once in a while a film comes along that positively requires the audience to shout helpful suggestions and lewd one-liners at the screen. “Heartbreak Hotel” is such a movie. All it needs to be perfect is a parallel soundtrack."

Music

Most of the songs contained in the film are actual Elvis Presley recordings despite the film being fictional, with David Keith and Charlie Schlatter performing the title track in the style of the 1968 television special recording.