Back when I was a single digit kid Elvis Presley mooms on tee-vee were like a big to-do...not exactly for anyone else inna fambly but for me. I always thought they were great what with the wild dancing, big time musical numbers and of course the obligatory fight scenes. Of course by the eighties when these mooms hit the afternoon dialing for dollars circuit I really couldn't care one whit about 'em, but my boob tube watching days were slowly but surely fading away from sight to the point where nowadays you couldn't get me in front of a real live set unless they were showing some of those old series I used to spend beaucoup bux on if only for a VCR containing two to four well-worn syndication prints of AMOS 'N ANDY or M-SQUAD.
LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE fits into the late-sixties Elvis conundrum well enough. Maybe even more so'n expected that I get the feeling that if I had watched this one on the NBC MONDAY NIGHT MOVIE during the early seventies I would have been told to go to bed in no uncertain terms (which had happened on scant occasion such as during the Don Knotts classic THE LOVE GOD and THE IMPOSSIBLE YEARS, the scene where the biker tells David Niven that what he knew about sex could get him arrested!). This 'un's a li'l too spicy even for an Elvis moom. Not as out-there as that scene in CHANGE OF HABIT where that mad Puerto Rican gang member was chewin' away on Mary Tyler Moore's tits but still naughty enough.
Of course it helps that the female lead (Michelle Carey) has all of the sex appeal of my last bowel movement and that the general plot is about one step removed from some LOVE AMERICAN STYLE romp (and really, can any of us take Dick Sargent playing anything even remotely hetero anymore???). In many ways this comes off like a late-sixties movie trying to look "M" but getting a "G" anyway...kinda like the aforementioned CHANGE OF HABIT come to think of it only without the tit snugglin' (and yeah, I still wonder how that 'un got a "G" anyway---the MPAA probably thought it was gonna be another Elvis romp and didn't even bother to watch it!). Naughty yet innocent enough that even the pseudo-PLAYBOY photo shoot scene where Elvis snaps some gal hiding her boobs with her muff (and no, she is not a contortionist) might just pass Aunt Petunia's scrutiny even if you might be beggin' for at least a peek of cleavage.
No real plot, message or moral can be discerned but then again were any needed in these films? Whatever plot there is just acts as a binder to the music numbers, fight scenes and romantic angle, sorta like a cinematic glue which keeps the fun stuff from falling apart.
Besides the irritating Carey, this 'un also has Rudy Vallee as the head of the respectable advertising firm, Don Porter as a health nut loosely patterned after Hugh Hefner, and Sterling Holloway as a milkman who just might be the same character who fixed William Demarest and Joan Blondell's tee-vee on that TWILIGHT ZONE episode now working under a new name in a new profession on the west coast after too much occult karma caught up with him. After getting an eyefulla the dream sequence (which of course gives Elvis another chance to stretch his tonsils) featuring the erstwhile WINNIE THE POOH actor coming off especially creep-like I wouldn't doubt it otherwise.
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