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Change of Habit

Change of Habit (1969)

November. 19,1969
|
6
|
G
| Drama Crime Music Romance

Dr. John Carpenter takes the job of running a health center in a low-income district. He enlists three women to help out who — unbeknownst to him — are actually nuns in street clothes. The church wants to improve the neighborhood but fears that nuns in full habit would not be well received. Unaware of her unavailability, John falls for Sister Michelle, serenading her with his guitar — which, luckily for him, effectively wears away at her religious resolve.

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Ploydsge
1969/11/19

just watch it!

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Pluskylang
1969/11/20

Great Film overall

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Grimossfer
1969/11/21

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

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Geraldine
1969/11/22

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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Jesus Carpenter
1969/11/23

If you only see one Elvis Presley movie, this is the one to see. Elvis plays a Christ figure doctor. His character's name is John Carpenter and shares the initials with the world's most famous carpenter, Jesus Christ. As a doctor, he can cure the incurable. He cures a child of autism. The movie proves that Elvis Presley is Jesus the Christ. That is precisely why Mary Tyler Moore's character, a devout Catholic nun, falls in love with him. She has dedicated her love to Jesus, yet she wants to dedicate her love to Elvis. While some critics believe that the ending is ambiguous, this critics disagrees. If viewed properly, the film ends with the realization that Mary Tyler Moore's character can have her cake and eat it too. She can love Jesus and Elvis equally and simultaneously because they are one and the same being. The rapid cutting in the final sequence between images of Elvis and images of Jesus reveals that this is the true meaning of the film's finale. Watch this film with this in mind, and your experience will be all the better for it.

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j_kro
1969/11/24

It seems a shame that someone with such talent as Elvis Presley consistently got such garbage for scripts. This movie shows what was still there, what had been there all along, if the material had just been a little better.This movie recalls the gutsy performances given in Jailhouse Rock and King Creole.A stronger support cast doesn't hurt either, and all the players seem equally committed to doing the film justice.Perfect, no.But overall, this is a very watchable movie, and testament to the talent that Elvis had.

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Bjorn (ODDBear)
1969/11/25

Presley's last feature film gets a plus for being...well...a Change of Habit. It's certainly different from most of his films. It's a bit more serious in tone. The locations are most definitely a big departure from the exotic and beach front settings so apparent in earlier films. And the King plays a Doctor...Dr. John Carpenter no less.But unfortunately Elvis left the building way before shooting ever started here. It's a crying shame really since this movie has a decent story, a wonderful central performance by Mary Tyler Moore, an uplifting message concerning personal faith and human perseverance and solid songs. Elvis doesn't even make an effort to play a ghetto doctor who falls for a nun (Moore) who's disguising herself as a plain nurse along with two fellow nuns.Mary Tyler Moore owns the film, hook line and sinker, and portrays well a nun who faces tough choices when she discovers love and an easier way to make a difference in peoples lives in a tough neighborhood riddled with gangsters and poverty.Elvis is present, little else, and provides well when the songs come in play. "Change of Habit" is a fun song which opens the film; he looks great rockin' out with "Rubberneckin'" and in the film's closing scenes performing "Let Us Pray". "Have a Happy" is a fun song but feels painfully out of place as this film doesn't play out like a Presley musical.By this time Presley had begun to focus exclusively on his music and this film was probably a joy for him to make...'cause he was about to finish his excruciatingly long film contract and he could jump head on into his real passion; music. Sadly; this could have been a real winner, instead it's somewhat lacking due to his (overly) relaxed and care-free performance.

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Ankhoryt
1969/11/26

One star for Elvis, one for Mary Tyler Moore, four stars for good intentions in depicting the racism, violence, and crime (particularly loan sharking in the character of The Banker) afflicting the poor. The other four stars are lost because of the relentless sexism the writers perpetrated while addressing practically every other -ism out there (even the inclusion of two significant minor characters with disabilities.) "What do you think we are, faggots?" This is the line from one of the men whose been enticed to move furniture after one of the nuns dresses like a prostitute and hollers "I need a man!" to try to get some help from the idlers across the street. Seriously. She puts on sheer black stockings, hooker lipstick and hair, and pulls her dress down off her shoulders. (Remember, this movie is not supposed to be one of Elvis' farces; we're supposed to take this seriously.) The faggot remark comes after she suggests the piano is very heavy. The nun apparently doesn't understand the comment, or chooses not to. Maybe by identifying homophobia with alcoholic ne'er-do-wells, the writers were trying to cast aspersions on that point of view; maybe that's as "out" as they could be about it.The Hispanic characters are depicted with some sympathy. The black nun, Irene (Barbara McNair), is trapped in a stairwell by two black activists who accuse her of "selling out" to "those ofay chicks" (that means white, if you haven't heard it before, and is a reference to the two white nuns), gets into a squabble about "Negro" v. "Black" and is told by the men that's she's too pretty not to stay pretty - a threat to mutilate her unless she... what? Unless she becomes a black separatist? What's the scene for, to identify black men as just generically all-purpose menacing? Well, yes, but only *angry and political* black men, contrasted to the woman's nose-to-the-grindstone apolitical and assimilationist work ethic. It's depressing to realize that yes, for its time, this probably *was* progressive. (In a later scene, Irene bluntly discusses the n-word with the Elvis character; that was *definitely* progressive back then!) Eventually, the black activists demonstrate peaceful intentions.So maybe, as some of the other commenters suggest, this was a serious attempt at being progressive racial and social justice commentary. The big bad however, here, is that the movie relies very heavily on sexual stereotyping. The nuns are subjected to the hateful misogynist Father Gibbons, the one who imitated the hooker is nearly subjected to what certainly sounds like it could develop into a gang rape "party" from the men who moved the furniture, and the young doctor treats his nurses very poorly indeed when they are just his office "girls" before he learns they are nuns.Also troubling, but not at all the movie's fault, is the diagnosis of a child as autistic "because she was rejected by her mother" - a theory totally discredited now - and the reliance on "holding" therapy, also discredited. "Holding" therapy has gotten children killed via suffocation, so don't try this at home. It's creepy to see it, even though the writers and producers did not know better at the time.But about the sexism, yes indeed, they did know better. By 1969, the Second Wave of feminism had been underway for several years and it's annoying to see MTM here, as she often was in "That Girl," forced to play a 50's stereotype as the 70's were about to begin.HIGHLIGHTS: A very young Ed Asner is a stitch as the neighborhood cop; if you're a fan, you won't want to miss his too-short, too-few scenes. Also, anyone who remembers the fury of pre-Vatican II Catholics at the inception of "guitar Masses" will be delighted by Elvis' rendering of same.

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