This is a good film to watch late at night, when you're too tired to concentrate on a heavy plot and are ready for some pretty music and comic diversion. The two songs you'll immediately recognize are "Blue Hawaii" and "Sweet Lelani" (which won the Oscar that year).
Bing Crosby is his usual agreeable self, in great voice, inhabiting the screen but not his character, really. His seemingly effortless singing is,as always,mellow and fine. Shirley Ross (she of "Thanks for the Memory" with Bob Hope) has a very appealing, intelligent and charming way with a line and a song. Bob Burns is there for comic relief, as is a young Martha Raye, who is, well, Martha Raye. You either like her or you don't...but she does manage a few laughs with her very physical antics and double-take expressions. A very lithe and boyish Anthony Quinn, playing one of his early "native" roles (here as a Polynesian), pops up in several scenes...years before his own ascendancy to super-stardom.
It's the music and the lavish Hollywood-Hawaiian sets and luau scenes that make this a very pleasant movie to watch.
Bing Crosby is his usual agreeable self, in great voice, inhabiting the screen but not his character, really. His seemingly effortless singing is,as always,mellow and fine. Shirley Ross (she of "Thanks for the Memory" with Bob Hope) has a very appealing, intelligent and charming way with a line and a song. Bob Burns is there for comic relief, as is a young Martha Raye, who is, well, Martha Raye. You either like her or you don't...but she does manage a few laughs with her very physical antics and double-take expressions. A very lithe and boyish Anthony Quinn, playing one of his early "native" roles (here as a Polynesian), pops up in several scenes...years before his own ascendancy to super-stardom.
It's the music and the lavish Hollywood-Hawaiian sets and luau scenes that make this a very pleasant movie to watch.